


Anjali's Red Scarf

by Bramblethorn



Category: Original Work
Genre: Autism, BDSM, Consensual Non-Consent, Dad Jokes, Desi Character, F/F, Melbourne, Porn for people who like science facts, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:46:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 100,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29900604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bramblethorn/pseuds/Bramblethorn
Summary: A mathematician accidentally ends up in a sugar mama/sugar baby relationship with the woman she used to tutor. Things get complicated.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	1. An Accidental Arrangement

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally posted on Literotica. It includes occasional BDSM/CNC play (more in later chapters), and some discussion of abusive relationships. See note at end of the story for acknowledgements.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anjali is considering escorting to pay her way through a PhD, and wants Sarah's advice. Somehow Sarah ends up hiring her by accident.

“I’m thinking of becoming a kept woman,” said Anjali, as calmly as if she’d been commenting on the quality of the café’s coffee.

I froze, hiding my reaction behind a forkful of cake. “A... a what?”

I didn’t know whether to take her literally. Anjali was a peculiar mix of deep knowledge and childlike naiveté, and it would be just like her to misuse an expression she’d read in a book somewhere.

“A kept woman. You know? A mistress. But I wanted your advice.”

Literally, then.

I caught the eye of the waiter and beckoned him over; I could see this was going to be a two-coffee conversation. Before I take that any further, though, let me explain the nature of our acquaintance.

* * * * *

We’d met seven years earlier, back when I lived in Sydney. I was halfway through a doctorate in operations research. I had a friend by the name of Kavita, an Indian-Australian student in the engineering department, and both of us had been doing mathematics tutoring to help pay the bills.

Kavita had been engaged for as long as I’d known her, with no definite date set, and then suddenly the plans all came together and the wedding took over her life with little warning. She asked if I could take on some of her students, and that’s how I came to be tutoring Anjali Kapadia.

“She’s a smart girl,” Kavita told me, “she’s going to be a doctor.” There was no _if_ in that sentence. “She won’t be any trouble, but you must be on your best behaviour. Her parents are very very strict.”

Anjali was sixteen when I met her, a slightly-built girl who wore great big glasses that made her look like an owl. She was in her second-last year of high school, attending a private ladies’ college that her parents had chosen for the height of its perimeter wall and the cast-iron spikes at the top.

She wanted to do Extension Mathematics Two, which is the hardest maths stream in the NSW system. It’s the course for hardcore mathematics nerds like myself, but it’s also popular with kids who want the high marks to get into medicine or law.

E2 is hard work even for a bright kid with a good teacher, and Anjali didn’t have a good teacher. The college’s Head of Mathematics had just retired, and the replacement teacher was out of his depth with the harder content. That’s where I came in.

Tutoring Anjali was the easy part. She was bright, and not just willing but _eager_ to work. That worked well for me. I’m a good explainer but a bad motivator, and E2 is tough enough to feel like serious punishment to anybody who’s just doing it for the marks. At that time I was tutoring a lot of wannabe med/law students who didn’t really want to be there, so it was a relief to have a pupil who wasn’t going to ask “why do we even need this?”

She loved to spend her lunchtimes alone in the school library, reading anything she could lay her hands on. As a result, she could reel off facts about anything from the history of watchmaking to the moons of Jupiter, and she’d do so at the slightest opportunity.

For all that, though, she could be deeply clueless on some matters. She had an impressive vocabulary but found literature classes immensely frustrating because she always missed subtext; she could recite the “Friends, Romans, countrymen” speech from memory, but couldn’t see how Antony uses that speech to manipulate the crowd.

Once we had a very confusing conversation where Anjali insisted that Australians used to eat mammoth meat. It turned out she’d been reading an old novel where somebody had a “mammoth sandwich”, and hadn’t understood that the author just meant a _big_ sandwich.

I soon learned never to laugh at such mistakes. She was very sensitive to embarrassment, to any situation that made her look foolish, and it was easy to bring her close to tears with a careless remark. I had been much the same at sixteen; I struggled to make friends of my own age, so I worked overtime trying to impress adults with my intellect, and failure was unbearable.

A little later in my own life, I would be diagnosed with what was then called Asperger syndrome and is sometimes misleadingly called “mild” autism. (I’m not fond of that expression; “mild” just means that I’m good enough at faking normal that I don’t inconvenience people around me too badly. It says nothing at all about what it’s like for me.)

Looking back, it’s blindingly obvious that Anjali was a kindred spirit – although more obviously so than myself – and perhaps that’s why we got on so well. But at the time, I just assumed her naiveté was the consequence of her sheltered upbringing.

About her parents. They most certainly were strict, excessively so, but they weren’t _mean_. They doted on their girl, they were proud of her achievements, and they wanted the best for her in everything.

Unfortunately, their idea of “the best” involved wrapping her up in cotton wool. Her mother drove her to school and collected her again every day. The only computer she could use was in the living room, so that her parents could keep a watchful eye on her, and it was locked down with parental-control software that made it almost useless for anything beyond word-processing. The TV was switched on only for parentally-approved content. And so on.

One afternoon when my bike was in the shop for repairs my then-boyfriend Edgar gave me a lift to tutoring in his car, and knocked on the door afterwards to pick me up. They said nothing at the time, but on my next visit Mrs Kapadia asked for a word with me before the lesson.

She offered me a cup of tea and then explained, very apologetically, that Mr Kapadia considered it inappropriate for Anjali to see me with a boy I wasn’t married to. In future, should I be unable to ride, I was to call them and she would come pick me up herself. Mrs Kapadia was as polite as could be, but I was left in no doubt that this was not to be repeated. For her part, Anjali seemed quite startled that I might be dating such a scruffy-looking lad. (In my defence, Edgar wasn’t a scruffy-looking lad when we started dating, but more on that later.)

Perhaps the hardest restriction of all, she wasn’t allowed a mobile phone until her seventeenth birthday, long after all her classmates had one. Her brother Mahesh, two years younger, got his the same day she did. There’s no justice.

Privately, I thought the Kapadias were making a big mistake. You can’t keep your child in a bubble forever, especially if she’s going to med school. Sooner or later Anjali was going to meet the Big Wide World, and then she was bound to get a crash course in the life lessons she’d been missing. But there wasn’t much I could do about it – or so I thought at the time – so I just took my seventy dollars an hour and did my job.

Like I said, I’m a good explainer and she was a good pupil. Sometimes it took a while for her to understand a concept, but once I got it across I never had to explain the same thing twice. It came as no surprise when her father told me she’d topped the school’s Year Eleven maths exams, and after they returned from the annual trip to visit family in Mumbai I agreed to continue for her final year.

In Year Twelve the content got tougher, but she was equal to the task. Solids of revolution, integration by parts, polynomial factorisations, conic sections, she learned it all and then practised until she could do it in her sleep.

The one topic where we ran into difficulty was complex numbers. It wasn’t that the subject was too complicated for her; the rules were simple compared to the other E2 content, and she could have memorised them easily enough.

No, it was an ethical dilemma. She was being asked to work with the square root of minus one, a thing that simply didn’t exist, and that bothered her deeply. “If it’s not true,” she asked, “why are we learning it? In _mathematics?_ Why should I try to believe in something that isn’t true?”

That was a tough one to resolve. In the end I had to go home and spend a couple of hours with my undergrad textbooks before I could figure out an explanation that would satisfy her. (In brief: _all_ numbers are abstractions that only exist inside our heads, but they give us a useful way of thinking about things that do exist in the real world.)

Of course, Anjali Kapadia was only a small part of my schedule. I had plenty of other things going on in my life. I had my other tutees; I had Edgar, and my own family; I had a doctoral project that was gradually mutating away from its original outline and threatening to eat my entire life if I couldn’t wrestle it into submission. But I liked her, and I felt a little pang when it came time for the last of our weekly tute sessions.

Our final session was a couple of days before the big exam. We ran over all the major topics, and I reminded her to make the most of the reading time. “I don’t think you’ll have any trouble, but if you do get stuck on anything, go on to the other questions and come back to it later.”

She gave me a little card signed by the whole family, and Mr Kapadia insisted on giving me a bonus. Then I wished her luck and rode home, wondering how her life would turn out, and thinking that I’d probably never see her again.

* * * * *

My phone woke me at one in the morning. I fumbled for my glasses, and saw it was Anjali, and wondered why on earth she’d be calling me. It was late November, and her exams should all be over.

For a moment I assumed that she’d hit my number by accident, and I almost ditched the call. But then I noticed I had two unread messages that had arrived while I slept, and I realised that it wasn’t like her to be calling _anybody_ at one in the morning. Something was up. So I answered it, padding out into the hallway to avoid waking Edgar.

She was talking very quietly; I could hear loud music in the background, and people who sounded drunk.

“Sarah. Sorry, sorry, I didn’t know who else to call.”

“What’s up?” I mumbled groggily.

“I’m at a party with Ellie.” I remembered the name: one of her classmates. “My parents don’t know I’m here. Some guys wanted me to drink something and I said no, but Ellie’s passed out and I can’t wake her...”

“Shit.” Suddenly she had my attention. “Where are you? In the house, I mean.”

“We’re in the living room.”

“Okay, good. Stay there with her.” It sounded like there were lots of people around. I just hoped they weren’t _all_ scumbags. “Don’t let anybody take you anywhere. Or her. No matter how nice they seem. If you have to hit them with a bottle or tell them to fuck off, you do that. Okay, where’s the party?”

She gave me a North Shore address.

“Right, got it. I’ll call the police.”

“No, please. My parents will kill me.”

Perhaps the sensible thing would have been to call the police anyway. But it would’ve felt like a betrayal. In the heat of the moment I didn’t even think to bring Edgar along.

“Okay, kid, hold on. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Remember, glass bottle.” I grabbed my things and headed for the car. Twenty-five minutes later I was standing on somebody’s doorstep, rapping the knocker loud enough to be heard over the bass thumping inside.

A hairy man-boy opened the door, then took a step back when he saw me. It could have been my bed-hair and my outfit – dressing gown, unicorn pyjamas, scuffed black Docs – but it could also have been my angry expression and the claw hammer in my right hand. I stepped towards him, smiling extra-wide like I’d practised in the car mirror, and he started to look like a frightened rabbit.

“Hi!” I said in my perkiest voice. “I’m here for Anjali and Ellie. Where are they?”

Frightened Rabbit pointed me to the living room. There were half a dozen lads, drunk and rowdily singing along with some auto-tuned wonder on the stereo. Behind them was Anjali, sitting on a sofa next to an unconscious girl who I took to be Ellie. I was pleased to see she had a beer bottle clenched in her hand, held by the neck.

In a better world, I’d have found out who the drink-spiking arseholes were and put that hammer to use. But I’m not an action hero. My job was just to get Anjali and her friend out of there.

“Come on, kids, time to go home.”

I glared at the boys until they got out of our way. Between the two of us, Anjali and I got Ellie out to the car. I drove far enough to put us out of sight of the house, and then I stopped to call triple-0 and let the cops know there was a party that needed a visit.

By the time I hung up, Anjali was pretty agitated. “We’re supposed to be staying at her place. Her parents are out. Can you take us back there?”

I shook my head. “I’m taking Ellie to hospital. We don’t know what they gave her and some of those drugs can seriously fuck your liver.” It must have been the first time I’d sworn in front of her. “Now, did you learn first aid at school?”

“Yes.”

“Good, you’re in charge of making sure she’s breathing okay, while I figure out where the nearest hospital is...”

The emergency ward was busy, but unconscious people are high on the triage list. So they took Ellie off for an appointment with a stomach pump, and after we’d done some paperwork they left us to wait with the less urgent cases and the other hangers-on.

Anjali let out a long sigh. “Are my parents going to find out?”

“Maybe. The police may want to take a statement from you. You’re a minor, I think they may have to notify your parents.” Then I thought of something else: “The hospital is definitely going to have to call Ellie’s parents, and I’m guessing they’d tell yours?”

Her face crumpled. Poor kid. I handed her a tissue and patted her shoulder, let her cry for a bit. “Tell you what. Let me call them, okay? Let me handle this one.” She sniffled assent.

In the normal run of things, I’m terrible at fast-talk. But if I have the element of surprise on my side, and a little time to plan things out, I can just about manage to ambush a sleeping target. Or even two...

“Mrs Kapadia, it’s Sarah Weber, I’m sorry to wake you, but I’m at the hospital with Anjali–”

“What did you say, Sarah? She is in HOSPITAL?”

“Yes, don’t panic, she’s not injured but the police may need to take evidence from her–”

I heard Mr Kapadia in the background saying something in Hindi, and she replied. Somewhere in there I heard my name. Then he said “give it to me,” and took the phone.

“Hello Sarah? What is the situation please?”

“I’m at the hospital with Anjali...”

Like I said: strict, but not mean. I knew they loved their girl, and I hoped that a scare might remind them of that. Call me cruel, but it was in a good cause.

I told him nothing that wasn’t true. I said that Anjali was unharmed but really upset, and that she and Ellie had gone to a party, and somebody had spiked Ellie’s drink. I said that thankfully, Anjali had been smart enough not to drink, and brave enough to stay there and protect her friend. And that she’d called me, because she was scared of what they’d say.

All through that he said almost nothing, other than to relay information to his wife. I think I’d succeeded in throwing them off balance.

“She’s here, do you want to talk to her?”

Of course they did. Anjali took the phone about as eagerly as if I’d offered her a grenade, and then began talking in Hindi. It was hard to tell, but from the tone of voice I didn’t think they were tearing strips off her.

Eventually she said, “ _Shukriya_. Bye, Mama,” and handed the phone back to me. Her father came back on. “We will come and pick her up.”

After he’d said goodbye, I put the phone away and turned back to Anjali. “How were they?”

“Ah. Better than they could have been. Th-thank you.”

It was a warm night, but she was shaking. I shrugged off my dressing gown and made her put it on, although it was too long for her. “Come on, kiddo, let’s get you something from the vending machines.”

As we waited for the machine to sputter out a cup of hot chocolate, I put my arm around her shoulder. “Okay, listen up. Two things. One, I know this seems like the end of the world right now, but it’ll blow over. You made a mistake, you dealt with it. I don’t think your parents are going to stay mad for too long. If they are, well.” I shrugged. “You’ll be eighteen pretty soon, and then you’re an adult and you get to decide how much say they have in your life.”

As any grown-up knows, this is not exactly the complete truth – especially, as Anjali tells me, for a good Hindu girl – but I figured it was true enough for the moment.

“Second thing. I’m not your tutor any more, so if you ever need an adult who’s not beholden to your parents, you have my number. If something like this happens, or if you just want a sanity check on anything, you can call me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

I gave her a hug. “But next time you call in the middle of the night, you owe me a coffee. Got it?”

“Got it.” She managed a weak smile.

Her parents showed up not long after that, and she ran straight into her mother’s arms. Mr Kapadia gave me a gruff but sincere thank-you. Then I said goodbye, retrieved my dressing gown, and drove home to where my bed awaited.

* * * * *

I messaged Anjali the next day to check how she was doing, but she didn’t reply. Much later, she told me she’d been grounded for a few weeks without phone privileges. By her parents’ standards, that was pretty mild, and all was forgiven when she made it into a prestigious medical program.

After that Anjali faded into the background of my life. It wasn’t that that she was ungrateful for my help, far from it; there just wasn’t space for friendship to develop just then. We were moving in different circles, and both of us were tremendously busy with our studies. I was trying to get my PhD under control and find employment opportunities, and Anjali was starting on a six-year medical degree. As if that wasn’t enough of a course load for any sane person, she’d managed to enrol in a couple of astronomy subjects “just for interest”.

So we kept in touch, but only barely. I’d copy her in on my annual happy-new-year message along with everybody else in my phone book, and she’d return the greeting, and that was about the extent of it. It would be another two years after that late-night rescue mission before we met again.

* * * * *

Once again it began with a call out of the blue. This time it wasn’t in the middle of the night, but the timing was nearly as bad. I was about to head overseas for a year-long postdoc in Leipzig, and I had a mountain of packing and tidying to get through before I flew out in the morning. I didn’t even have Edgar to help; he’d been called away to visit a relative at short notice.

I told Anjali I couldn’t chat just then, and she said it was no problem, but she sounded disappointed. So I added: “You can come over and talk while I pack, if you like? I’d love to catch up.” And she did.

She’d changed, and she hadn’t. Although she’d filled out a little and gained an inch or two in height, she still wore the big owl-glasses, and the _shalwar kameez_ that I remembered from our tutoring sessions. She still lived with her parents.

I thought she’d matured considerably. She seemed much more comfortable in her own skin now, no longer in such a rush to impress me. Nor was she so easily shocked; between my gothic tastes and Edgar’s fondness for power metal, the flat was decorated in a style that would have horrified seventeen-year-old Anjali, but the nineteen-year-old edition didn’t bat an eyelid.

And her conversation had become much more _normal_. I wasn’t sure whether to be glad of that, or sad...

One of the classic autistic traits is “special interests”. (Or “intense hobbies”, or just “obsessions”, depending on who you ask.) The kid who knows the entire history of Sweet Valley High, the entomologist who spends a lifetime cataloguing beetles of the world, the violinist who’s devoted their life to Bach: none of those people are _necessarily_ autistic, but there’s a good chance of it.

Fortunately for me, one of my “special interests” is highly marketable. Introduce me to a major airline – or a busy cargo port, or a road freight hauling company – and I can usually find a way to improve their throughput by half a percentage point, just by tinkering with their schedule. That might not sound very impressive, but think of it this way: if you’re running a fleet of two hundred aircraft, and I can make them zero-point-five per cent more efficient, I’ve just given you an extra plane’s worth of business for much less than the cost of a new 767. So I’m in demand.

But for a lot of autistic people it doesn’t work out so well. An encyclopaedic knowledge of My Little Pony or mediaeval wagon construction isn’t likely to pay the bills, and if you speak too enthusiastically about your interests people are likely to start backing away from you.

The “mild” ones among us learn to suppress those enthusiasms, along with the other traits that would make us stand out too much. We can do it, but it takes a toll; there’s a reason so many “mild” autistic folk burn out in later life. For those reasons, I was both glad and sorry to see that Anjali had learned that particular skill.

Happily, it didn’t take too long for her to remember that she could speak freely around me, and within half an hour she was telling me about her studies in fine detail. She was doing well in medicine, passing all her exams, but most of all she wanted to talk about the astronomy and astrophysics she’d been taking. She’d moved past Jupiter now and was out among the stars, rhapsodising about the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle and the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. I didn’t absorb much of it, but clearly she was enthralled.

After about fifteen minutes of telling me about the cosmos, she seemed to remember that she’d come here for a purpose. “Sarah, you know how you said I could ask you about anything?”

It took me a moment to remember that promise. It _had_ been two years, after all. “Oh, yes? Sure.”

“Well, I’ve been seeing this boy...”

It was pretty much what you’d expect. He was a nice boy, she liked him but wasn’t sure how serious this was going to be. She was considering sleeping with him and wanted my advice. (“On what aspect?” “Everything?”)

I told her the sort of things I felt she ought to know about consent, respect, safe sex. I didn’t try to persuade her one way or the other, and to this day I don’t know or care whether she actually _did_ sleep with him. I just wanted to make sure she was in a good position to make an informed choice for herself.

After that discussion we shared a pot of Edgar’s awful tea-bag tea, and then she wished me _bon voyage_ and walked out of my life again.

* * * * *

My year in Germany was fantastic for my career, but it also spelled the end of the line for me and Edgar. We’d been growing apart for some time before I left, and the distance and time difference made it harder to keep papering over the cracks. Four months into my stay, we agreed to call it quits.

At first I drowned my sorrows in late-night work, but eventually I realised it’d be a waste to spend the year locked up in my office. I did some sight-seeing, I looked up the places where my father’s grandparents had lived, and most of all I explored the German gothic scene. Luisa, one of the other foreign postdocs, shared my musical tastes, and so we went clubbing together.

It took me several months to figure out that Luisa was making passes at me, and by the time I realised it she only had a month left on her contract. Talk about wasted opportunity! Still, we did our best to make up for lost time in that last month. It was quite sweet and very therapeutic, and knowing there was a natural expiry date on our fling ensured that both of us went into it with matching expectations.

With all of that happening at my end, Anjali had once again dropped off my radar. Had I been paying attention, I might have picked up a few hints of trouble in that direction. But as it was, I didn’t notice a thing until she sent me a plaintive but uninformative email – “everything is a disaster” – and it took a long IM conversation to get the rest out of her.

Most medical students struggle to remember all the facts they’re supposed to learn. Anjali’s problem was the opposite: she remembered too much, and struggled to filter it down to what was actually needed. Usually the obvious answers are correct – there’s an old medical saying, “when you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras” – but Anjali had difficulty gauging what was obvious.

One of several incidents she mentioned: she’d been asked to look over a patient who’d come in complaining of an upset stomach. She noticed a smell of garlic, immediately remembered that this can be caused by certain types of poisoning, and recommended testing for arsenic, thallium, and organophosphates. She had never thought to ask the patient if he’d been eating garlic recently, because her textbooks had never presented that scenario.

Knowing Anjali as I did, I understood why she had difficulty with that kind of challenge. Things that are obvious to other folk sometimes take longer for our kind to learn. But her teacher had handled it in the worst possible way; he’d implied to her that her only competence was rote-learning, and then he’d talked about the incident in front of the entire class. He hadn’t named her, but I’m pretty sure her classmates would’ve figured it out, if only by the look on her face. Two weeks later, she still couldn’t let it go.

_AK: what if he’s right?_

_AK: what if the only thing I’m good at is memory???_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: NO. He’s wrong and he’s an arsehole. Don’t you dare start thinking like that._

I reminded her of the girl I’d tutored, who refused to memorise the laws of complex numbers until she understood how they were justified in the scheme of things. Then I paused, aware that what I was about to say might give offence, and I typed and retyped the next sentence half a dozen times before hitting send.

_PrincessOfParallelograms: Anjali, are you familiar with the diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s?_

_AK: why would u say that? Do I seem autistic to u??_

_AK: are u saying I’m mentally ill?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: Just saying that I’m autistic and some of this sounds pretty familiar._

_AK: well_ _,_ _I’m not._

_PrincessOfParallelograms: Do me a favour? Please read the criteria and just think about it?_

I waited a while, but there was no answer, so I logged off. Luisa and I had plans for the evening, and I didn’t want to spoil my mood with an argument.

Three days later, I finally got a reply from Anjali:

_AK: Hey Sarah, I apologise, you might have a point. Can we talk?_

As I’d suspected, there was a gulf between what she’d been learning in med school and what she’d internalised in the previous seventeen years. Her parents would have rejected any suggestion of autism outright – “nothing wrong with our child!” – and some of that attitude had rubbed off on her. But once she sat down and thought about it, she found herself checking off a lot of the boxes.

Every autistic person is different; it’s a bad idea to make assumptions about what we can and can’t do. But some issues come up a lot, and they’re easier to spot if you know what you’re looking for.

There’s a stereotype that we hate interacting with other people, which isn’t quite correct. I like almost everybody and in many situations I enjoy talking; it’s just that it wears me out. When I talk to you I’m doing all sorts of mental work just to maintain the semblance of a normal conversation: am I making enough eye contact? Am I talking too much, or too little? If I fold my arms, are you going to read something into that? What sort of emotions should I be portraying here?

So I have to budget that stuff. Given time to prepare, I can give an excellent seminar – I’ve won prizes for the clarity of my student presentations. But I need to allow for self-care. In the breaks when everybody else is networking, I’ll sneak off for some solitary time the way other people duck out for a cigarette, and in the evening it takes me hours to unwind enough that I can go to sleep.

When I mentioned that to Anjali, she considered it for a while and acknowledged that she had similar issues. She was worried about what that might mean for her career, and I thought she was right to worry. Dealing with difficult people is a big part of a doctor’s job, and patients are the least of that.

_AK: so do you think I can still be a doctor?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: You’re a smart girl. I think you could pass the course and get your M.D. if you set your mind to it. Maybe if you get a formal diagnosis they can make some accommodations._

_PrincessOfParallelograms: My worry is what it might cost you. I don’t want you to burn yourself out and make yourself miserable just to prove a point._

I tried to brainstorm medical career paths that might be suited to her aptitudes – something in forensics, perhaps, or research? If we’d had that conversation a couple of years earlier, perhaps one of those could have worked out. But by the time she reached out for help, she’d been bottling up her unhappiness for so long that it had congealed into a huge intractable lump that I couldn’t dismantle. The idea of continuing her medical degree filled her with overwhelming dread and hopelessness, no matter what I suggested.

_AK: so what should I do?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: I can’t make that choice for you._

_AK: doesn’t feel like I have any choice._

_PrincessOfParallelograms: What do you *want* to do? If you didn’t have to worry about pleasing your parents and if money wasn’t an issue?_

_AK: I can’t think of anything. This stuff just keeps going round and round in my head._

_PrincessOfParallelograms: Okay, then, what do you do for fun?_

She had difficulty answering that. Her state of mind was a long way from “fun”. But eventually I was able to prompt her into remembering a few things. She liked movies, especially the Bollywood kind; she took an interest in fashion and dressmaking; she enjoyed reading, of course; and she liked to go outside at night and look at the stars.

Hmm.

_PrincessOfParallelograms: How did you go with those astro courses, by the way?_

_AK: 98% in the last one :-) but that doesn’t count towards anything, alas._

Hmmmm.

_PrincessOfParallelograms: Okay, let me think about things for a while. I’m busy tomorrow, but we can talk Wednesday?_

_AK: okay, Wednesday. Thank u for listening <3_

After signing off, I went on the web and did a bit of digging. It wasn’t hard to find the names of her astronomy lecturers. I jotted down a plan of attack, went over it until I was comfortable with it, and then dialled Australia.

“Hello, Professor Thomas? Doctor Sarah Weber speaking. Sorry to trouble you, but I’m looking for career advice for a friend – I don’t suppose you remember Anjali Kapadia?”

He remembered Anjali very well. She’d asked a lot of questions, and he’d appreciated her enthusiasm. Yes, he would be happy to talk to her about career options in astrophysics. Obviously he couldn’t make any promises, but perhaps something could be arranged.

It wasn’t the only option that I investigated, but it seemed the most viable, and it was the one that caught Anjali’s interest. She met with Professor Thomas, and when I talked to her afterwards she was starting to believe that there might be possibilities outside medicine. She could switch into the science stream with credit for most of her medical subjects. If she spent a year catching up on physics and astrophysics, then she could do an Honours year and go from there to a PhD.

It would be academically demanding – she’d have to take extra subjects to catch up what she’d missed – but I didn’t doubt that she could do it. I had a feeling she might even enjoy that kind of punishment.

The hard part would be selling it to her parents.

As Anjali explained it to me, parental authority is very strong in Hindu families. Mother and father know best, and even as adults, the kids do what they’re told. If they laid down the law and she refused to obey, that would be a very serious infraction; not quite unforgivable, but far more than Anjali was prepared to deal with.

(By now, you may have gathered that she was a sensitive lass, and averse to conflict. But she was also a kindly soul. She genuinely loved her parents, and would’ve hated to cause them distress.)

Her father would be the toughest obstacle. We talked about a dozen different ways to persuade him, and all of them ran up against the same brick wall. He was a businessman, and abandoning a guaranteed meal ticket for a precarious career in stargazing was bad business. There was no winning that argument. Ergo, we needed to find some other advantage.

Mrs Kapadia might be a little more sympathetic, but not enough to contradict her husband on something like this. Besides, between the two of them they had told practically the entire Indian diaspora in Sydney that Anjali Kapadia was going to be a doctor. Backing down from that would be awkward, and it was exacerbated by some sort of rivalry with the Daswani family down the street, whose son was in Anjali’s year.

Anjali and I went back and forth trying to figure out some argument that might persuade her parents. When she signed off an hour later to go to class, we were no closer to a solution.

Meanwhile, I ran myself a bath and tried to think if I’d missed anything. I have a wide repertoire of logical problem-solving skills that I’ve picked up in the course of my work. They’re better suited to mathematical problems, but if you squint hard enough, sometimes you can make a people problem look like a mathematical problem.

As the heat soaked through my bones, I thought to myself: _does family influence define a partially-ordered set? If it does, we’re really stuck. So we need to show that it’s_ not _a poset, which means finding a cycle..._

Which translates back to “is there anybody who Anjali _can_ persuade, who has influence over her parents?” I expect to some people that seems like a very roundabout way of arriving at the obvious. But it’s how my mind works.

The next day – in my time, not hers – we continued our plotting.

_PrincessOfParallelograms: hey, I remember you had a white telescope. Who did that come from?_

_AK: That’s from Dadi._

_AK: That is, my father’s mother. I still have it._

From what I recalled, it was a decent telescope. Nothing extravagant, but not a plastic toy, not a trivial purchase. A favourite-granddaughter gift?

_PrincessOfParallelograms: Is she interested in astronomy then?_

_AK: More astrology, but close enough. I avoid getting into that particular argument with her._

_AK: ...wait, I think I see where you’re going with this. That just might work._

I learnt that Mr Kapadia’s widowed mother was seventy-three, a little frail now, but sharp as ever. She was fond of Anjali, and yes, she had considerable sway over Anjali’s father. She lived in Mumbai, and the Kapadias were due to visit her in two months, after Anjali and Mahesh had finished their exams.

From there the plan fell into place. Anjali would wait for their visit, and then ask for her _dadiji’s_ support. We worked out some scripts she could follow for talking to her grandmother and her parents, covering all the contingencies we could think of. We also made arrangements to obtain a letter from Professor Thomas testifying to her talent for astrophysics and encouraging her to consider it as a career. I figured it couldn’t hurt if we gave them an opportunity to spin it as Anjali’s being headhunted rather than dropping out.

 _AK: And I’ll have to make sure I beat the Daswani_ _boy in finals._

I was still concerned for her. It was a good plan, as far as I can judge these things, but there were still far too many things that could go wrong. If it didn’t work, if her parents still said no, it would be shattering for her.

Those two months must have felt like a very long time for Anjali. But for me, the time flew by as I said goodbye to Luisa and worked to wrap up my project. If I hadn’t set myself a reminder, I would have quite forgotten to wish Anjali luck before her exams. The day after she finished them, she flew out with her family.

She messaged four days later.

_AK: Hi Sarah. I had the talk with my parents._

_PrincessOfParallelograms: How did it go? How are you?_

_AK: Well..._

* * * * *

As she told it to me, when her father learned that she wanted to switch from medicine to astrophysics, his first reaction was “Hey...Bhagwan.” 

_PrincessOfParallelograms: Is that good?_

_AK: It’s Hindi for “Oh God”._

_PrincessOfParallelograms: oh._

Her parents had argued with her for three hours. This is just a passing fad – you’re throwing away all hope of financial security – what use is astrophysics to anybody? – look, your mother is crying now – what sort of example are you setting for your brother? – and so on, round and round.

Thankfully, we’d anticipated most of these gambits and planned out scripts for Anjali to use in reply. If she didn’t manage to win her parents over to the idea, at least she was able to hold her ground and prevent them from talking her out of it. At last, when she saw them beginning to tire, she sprung the trap.

“Maybe we should ask Dadi what to do about this?”

Mr Kapadia took the bait. He had no idea that his guileless little girl had already spoken with his mother, and so he was caught off-guard when the matriarch sided with Anjali.

“It’s not the most practical ambition,” she said, “but sometimes people need to follow their talents. You say this professor invited you specially?” And Anjali produced the letter that Professor Thomas had so kindly written.

Worn down, Mr Kapadia conceded. “Very well. If your heart is set on it. But you cannot expect us to pay for this, do you understand?”

* * * * *

Some people are fixtures in one’s life, as dependable and regular as the sun or the moon. I had come to think of Anjali as something more like a comet. Every once in a while she would drop in, shine brightly for a few days or weeks, and then fade once again for years at a stretch, as her orbit took her back to the dim periphery of my life.

But at the right moment, the slightest nudge can bump a comet’s orbit into an entirely new course.

Anjali reappeared in my life two years after she’d made the decision to change her degree. By then I was living in Melbourne, working for OwKeMa, a small logistics consulting company. I loved the work, and they loved me back. I was getting paid good money to do a job I would’ve done for free.

The only major downside was that I had no chance to spend it. I was working ten-hour days and then taking work home with me, and I didn’t know many people in Melbourne so I had no reason to go out. Eventually my boss took me aside and warned me about workaholism. “You’re doing a great job, Sarah, and I don’t want you burning out. You need to go out and have fun, find a hobby.”

It was good advice, but hard for somebody like me to follow. I’m the kind of person who goes somewhere to meet new people and then spends the whole night trying not to be noticed, because strangers are scary and I don’t know how to start conversations.

That was when Anjali texted to say she was in town, in fact she had been for a couple of months, and would I like to get coffee some time?

We met up at a café. It was a frigid July day and all the inside tables were taken, so we sat outside in our jackets and huddled close to a big gas heater as we caught up on one another’s lives.

“Sarah, I didn’t thank you properly. When I got the letter to confirm my change of enrolment... it was a gigantic weight coming off my shoulders. I knew I’d made the right choice.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” I patted her hand. “So, astrophysics? What are you studying these days?”

She’d fallen in love. Not in those words, and not with a human being, but there was no missing the fever in her eyes and the way she flapped her hands as she talked faster than I could take it all in. Neutron stars, that was it: the white-hot bones of dead stars, crushed by unimaginable gravitic forces into arcane states of matter. Marbles the size of a city and the weight of a star, spinning hundreds of times a second, tearing everything near them apart.

Yes, within her passion for astronomy she had found an obsession. So she had come to do her PhD in Melbourne under Professor Cheng, a world expert in the field.

The problem, of course, was money. She’d secured a scholarship but it was barely enough to live on. For the time being she was staying in a crowded share house, but that was becoming impossible. It was always noisy, and she always had to wait for the one bathroom, and her housemates were pigs. Like me, she was sensitive to distraction, and she needed her personal space.

“I’m fed up with eating ramen. I have no money for anything.” She patted her jacket, and I realised it was the same one I’d seen her in seven years ago. It was quite faded now, and looking a little threadbare.

She could have looked for a part-time job, but that would have been swapping one distraction for another. I’ve known way too many people who tried to combine a PhD with work and ended up dropping out, and Anjali wasn’t the multi-tasking sort.

“So, I had an idea for what I could do about it.”

“Oh?”

“I’m thinking of becoming a kept woman.” And that’s where we came in.

She’d heard that some students supported themselves through university by doing escort work. Her natural curiosity had taken her to the internet, and so she discovered the existence of “sugar daddy” websites.

“Um, Anjali...you do understand that it would mean sleeping with the guy?”

“Oh, Sarah! I know I’m naïve but I’m not _completely_ innocent. I know that much.” She looked off into the distance, twirling a teaspoon in her fingers. “I quite enjoy sex, you know. When it’s with somebody who’s good at it and isn’t going to go blabbing to the whole world. And I don’t care about all that purity nonsense, don’t tell my parents I said that. If somebody wants to pay me for it, fine! I looked up what people charge... whooh! But I know it’s a big step. So I wanted your advice.”

“Okay. Uh, you’ll have to give me some time to think. This isn’t exactly the conversation I expected to be having today.”

She must have noticed that I was looking flustered. “Sarah, I don’t mean to offend you. If you have a problem with it...”

I shook my head. “Not morally. I mean, one of my friends worked as an escort for years. Consenting adults and all that.” I shrugged. “It’s just... it’s not easy work. She had to deal with difficult people sometimes, and it takes a lot out of you. Need to be able to assess people and figure out who’s okay and who’s not. I think that’s going to be very hard for you, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I know. That’s why I was thinking mistress, not escorting. That way it’d only be one guy and I could wait a while to find somebody nice.”

I sighed. “Look, this all seems a bit... extreme. If you don’t have anywhere else, I have a spare bedroom. You could stay there for a few weeks until you can find something better.”

I wasn’t comfortable making the offer. I really need my space, and after some bad experiences with good friends who turned into terrible housemates, I’m very reluctant to share with anybody, even somebody who I’d known as long as Anjali. But I’d have felt bad if I hadn’t offered.

“Sarah, that’s very kind of you. But I just can’t take charity. It’s been so hard to get out from being dependent on my parents, I don’t want to be dependent on somebody else. No offence. And I really want to live _by myself,_ at least for a bit.”

“You’d still be dependent on some guy.”

“That’s different. It’s paid work and I know what the exchange is.”

I sighed. “Okay, you know, I’m _way_ out of my depth. Let me ask my friend, and I’ll get back to you.”

We met up again a couple of days later, and I relayed the advice my friend Kate had given me. “She thinks it might work, but there’s a lot of stuff you need to watch out for.”

Anjali and I discussed how to sort the wheat from the chaff, how to protect her real identity from discovery, and the importance of setting boundaries. “The good thing about escorting,” Kate had said, “is that they pay by the hour, and when the time’s up you’re done. But rich guys, if they have you on retainer, a lot of them will expect you to be sitting around waiting for the call twenty-four-seven. Does your friend want that?”

No, Anjali did not want that. Kate had warned us that escorting could be mentally exhausting. “It’s not even the sex, it’s that you’re working flat out to make them feel clever and charming.” For that reason, Anjali had decided that she wasn’t going to offer more than one date a week. That way she could allow herself time to prepare, and to decompress afterwards.

She and I talked over that and other aspects of the arrangement: how much money she was looking for and how to receive it, what sort of gifts would be reasonable to accept, and what to refuse, what sort of warning signs to watch for and what to do if she got into trouble.

I still had huge misgivings about the whole idea. Sex life or no, Anjali was still an _unschuldsengel_ in my eyes, and with all the preparation in the world I wasn’t sure she could deal with this. My instinct was to protect her, both as a fellow Aspie and as my former student. But I couldn’t offer another solution that she was willing to accept. As we talked, I realised that somewhere along the way her language had shifted from “if I did this” to “I will”. She’d made her decision, for better or for worse, and I knew how hard it was to shift her once she’d made up her mind. All I could do was try to help her deal with it.

* * * * *

Anjali created a profile on a website Kate had recommended. Attractive scientist “Lily” seeks gentleman for intelligent conversation and more, no married men please. She took a couple of selfies that were alluring without being easily recognisable, and I went over them and blurred out a couple of possibly-identifying details in the background before she submitted them.

“Do you think I’ll get any responses?” she asked me.

“I expect so. Plenty of fish in the sea.”

I phoned her a couple of days later. “How’s the ad going? Any responses?”

“Sarah, you were right. There are many fish in the ocean. But unfortunately I think perhaps they are the creepy kind that lives at the bottom?”

“Oh dear. Dick pics?”

“Three so far. Some others who wanted me to talk dirty or send nudes. I just blocked them like we discussed.”

“Good lass. Any keepers?”

“Well, there was one gentleman, but he sounds too good to be true.” She read me the message he’d sent her.

“Ah. Right, I see the issue. No, he’s not literally offering to shower you in gold.” I had to explain that one.

“Oh my goodness. No, I think I shall have to decline his kind offer.”

Eventually the initial rush of creeps moved on to pester somebody else, and Anjali began to get some more worthwhile leads. She heard from a handful of men who seemed at least semi-serious about a possible arrangement, and made a series of appointments to meet with them.

But one by one, each of those leads fell through. Sometimes she decided they were unsuitable: the man who admitted he _was_ married to a woman who “didn’t understand him”, the man who wanted her to drop her studies and come live on his yacht, the man who started their lunch meeting by bullying the waitress.

Sometimes, though, it was the men who rejected her, often for reasons that made no sense to her. She was too pushy, too aloof, too wrapped up in herself, so they said.

Every time she found a new gentleman she’d convince herself that this was the one, this time it would all work out, and every time she’d end up with hopes dashed. She’d phone me in frustration, and I’d listen to her vent for a bit, and together we’d try to figure out what had gone wrong.

I’m not much good at reading between the lines, but from what she could tell me of their conversations I got the impression she’d inadvertently trodden on some egos. Anjali was the sort who’d correct people on trivial errors and think she was helping, because she assumed that everybody wanted to be correct. But the sort of men she was meeting with didn’t appreciate being shown up. Some, I think, expected her to be impressed by their achievements, and may not have taken it well when she seemed more interested in talking about her own research.

Or they might have taken her body language amiss. It’s something that happens to me a lot. Making eye contact is distracting, so the more I want to hear what you have to say, the more likely I am to stare at the wall or my shoes instead of your face, and people often misinterpret that.

There was one fellow, though. His name was James, and they hit it off at their first meeting. He found her fascinating, and would very much like to meet her for a dinner date. He liked sailing, and horse-riding. That rang a bell for me.

“What did you say he does?”

“Something in mining. Coal mining.”

“Wait a moment...” I pulled up a LinkedIn profile and sent it to her. “It’s not this guy, is it?”

“It is! Do you know him?”

“Yeah, I’ve done some work for his company. So he said he was single?”

“Yes... he’s not?”

“Nope. I’ve met his wife.”

Anjali swore, and swore some more, and then she started to cry. “Sarah, is there something wrong with me? Why is it the only guys I can attract are cheaters or arseholes? Maybe I’m just not suited for this.”

“Oh, sweetie. You’re amazing. You’re a jewel, and there is nobody like you in the whole world. But that’s not for everybody. Some of these guys just want somebody they can put in a box, and you’re not like that.”

“Do you mean that? Or are you just being nice?”

I tried to persuade her not to take the rejections personally, but without success. It wasn’t just about these particular guys. It was something I knew all too well: the years of pent-up frustration from living like an alien in a world of people who don’t work like we do, the exhaustion of constantly trying to camouflage our differences and trying to figure out what we did wrong when yet another interaction goes balls-up.

* * * * *

It’s a stupid thing – I had never been comfortable with the idea of her doing this work, and part of me felt relieved every time one of these connections fell through. But at the same time I felt indignant that these men were writing her off for such superficial reasons. Couldn’t they _see_ what a mind she had, what that was worth?

It was getting very late, and eventually we had to break off the conversation so we could both get to bed. But sleep didn’t come easily to me. I lay awake thinking: what sort of guy would be right for Anjali? Somebody who spoke her language, who could recognise and appreciate the spark in her, rather than expecting her to smother it. Somebody who wanted companionship but was too busy for a full-time relationship.

Someone like...

Yes, yes, I’m sure you’ve figured out where that line of thought is heading. But self-awareness isn’t my one of my strong points, and it did not occur to me that the lonely workaholic I was describing was essentially myself in everything but gender. I hadn’t even stopped to notice that I _was_ lonely.

At work I try to put myself in the client’s shoes, to get a feel for what they see and what they don’t. Perhaps, I thought, I should see how Anjali’s profile looked from the other side. What would this ideal boyfriend see when he looked at her profile? Would he recognise Anjali as a kindred spirit? Was she even showing up on the right searches?

There was an obvious way to find out. I climbed out of bed, pulled my dressing-gown around myself, and warmed up my laptop. I had to register for a trial account before I could view the listings, so I picked a name from one of my favourite movies, and a few minutes later I was looking at Anjali’s profile through the eyes of “Miriam Blaylock”. Somebody like me, but just a little bit hungrier, a little more ruthless.

It took me a moment to notice that she’d changed the first word in her profile. It now began with “ _Autistic_ scientist seeks intelligent man...”

That gave me pause for thought. I was proud of her for owning it, and I could understand the reasoning: put it out front and immediately filter out all the guys who can’t deal with that. But I hated to think how many people would see that word and write her off immediately – and what would she think, if nobody replied at all?

I’d like to claim that the next bit was motivated purely by kindness on my part. I can’t swear that it was. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’m still not certain whether it was all about sparing Anjali’s feelings, or if something else had crept into my decision. But whatever my reasons may have been, I paid to upgrade “Miriam Blaylock” to a full account so I could send Anjali a message.

_Hi there. I saw your bio. I just wanted to say how good it was to see another Aspie on this site and know I’m not alone. It’s so hard to find somebody on the same wavelength. Now I just have to find one who’s interested in women... meanwhile, good luck from one alien to another!_

I hoped it might at least cheer her up a little. And once I sent it, I finally managed to switch off and get to sleep.

The next afternoon my phone buzzed with an email alert. I was in a video meeting, and I should’ve left it until afterwards, but after fifty minutes of bad PowerPoint slides I was beginning to lose the will to live and I badly needed a distraction. So of course I checked the message.

_Hello Miriam, thank you for writing! Just so you know... I’ve never dated women before, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t give it a try. Let me know if you’re interested in talking more. xxx - Lily_

FUCK. That was not how it was supposed to go. No, no, no.

If the first fifty minutes of the meeting had been dull, the next hour was outright torture. I had to feign interest and nod and answer a few questions, while my brain was churning away trying to figure out how best to fix my Cunning Plan. As soon as we wrapped up I took an early mark and hopped on a train home.

I was mentally drafting an I-fucked-up email when Anjali called.

“Hi Sarah! Is this a good time to talk?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m just on the train...”

“That’s okay. I have some good news, I got another message –”

“From Miriam Blaylock?”

Silence. I could almost hear the gears whirring. “Yes. How did you know that?”

“I have a confession to make. I sent that message.”

“You? What? Sarah – “

Then the train went into a tunnel and I lost the call. When I got back into the sunlit realms, there was a text message waiting for me.

_I had no idea you were interested. You could have just told me! I must say this is a surprise, and I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I’m not in the least bit offended._

I tried to draft a reply.

 _But I wasn’t_ –

_I was just trying to –_

_You’ve misunderstood, I –_

The words just wouldn’t come out right. I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t result in a let-down, and perhaps I didn’t know what I really wanted to say. Eventually I settled on _maybe we should talk in person._

_Okay. I’m home now if you want to come over._

I changed trains at the next stop and headed over to her place. There was no privacy at all there – there was a guy sleeping on the couch in the kitchen, and a couple of girls smoking out the back – so we walked to a nearby dog park. It was still cold, and our breath fogged as we walked, both of us unsure how to start the conversation.

“So,” I said.

“So. Were you serious?”

I had to think about that. “I’m really not sure. I wanted to cheer you up. I never considered the possibility that you might say yes.”

“Well, _I_ never considered the possibility that you were interested in women.”

I chuckled. “First and last and always, my dear. You never saw the petitions and rainbow banners on my Facebook?”

“I knew you were supportive, but... what about Edgar?”

“Ah, now. Once upon a time I fell in love with a cute butch lesbian. But after we’d been together a year or so, she figured out she wasn’t really a she, he was a transgender man, and he needed to transition. It was complicated for the two of us. If I’d met Edgar as Edgar, it probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere. But when you’re already in a relationship with somebody, it’s different.”

“Oh.” She paused for a moment, frowning the way she sometimes did when assimilating new data, but she didn’t seem bothered by it. “Have you dated anybody since you and he broke up?”

“There was this girl in Germany. That was lovely, but it was a short-term thing... I guess I didn’t say much about it on Facebook. Nobody since I got back to Australia.”

“Do you want to?”

“Date somebody? Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do. I miss having somebody to cuddle up with. And, uh, and so on. But I’m so busy with work, I haven’t even had time to look. It wouldn’t be fair on a partner, when I don’t have the time to be a proper girlfriend.”

“What if it was a person who had signed up for that sort of arrangement, who didn’t want a full-time thing?”

“I guess? That makes sense, but it just feels... weird.”

“Do you mean paying for it would be weird? Or with me in particular, that is weird?”

“Both. It feels like a rich people thing. Not me.”

“Excuse me, Sarah? You don’t think of yourself as rich?”

That stopped me in my tracks.

My job often brought me into contact with the kind of people who fly first class for free. Fortune 500 execs with titles like “Chief Operations Officer” who rounded things to the nearest ten million dollars. That was my idea of “rich”, and I wasn’t remotely in that league.

But it had been a very long time since I’d told myself “I can’t afford that,” or even “I’ll have to save up for that one”. I was paying off a comfortable inner-city flat with all-new furniture, and I’d hired a weekly cleaner. Any time I didn’t feel like cooking, I could get food delivered without worrying about my budget, and if only I had time for holidays I could buy a business-class ticket to anywhere in the world. I might not have an entourage or a G5, but I could afford the things I wanted.

_I could afford you, my dear._

“Huh,” I replied. “I suppose I am, just a little. It snuck up on me.”

She, tactfully, said nothing.

“I know you’re not sixteen any more, but it still feels... predatory?”

“Because you’ve been a kind of mentor to me?”

“I guess so.”

“I am very grateful for all that you’ve done, Sarah, and your scruples are a credit to you. But may I ask, if you didn’t have to worry about the ethics of the situation, is this something you would _want_ to do?”

I tried to hush the incessant whisperings of the angel on my shoulder so I could think for a moment. If we didn’t have that history, if she was somebody I’d just met, how might I feel about Anjali?

She ticked a lot of my boxes. She was smart, and good-hearted, and cute in an owlish sort of way. (I like butch and I like cute and I like high femme. I like lots of things.) She was seven years younger than me, just like she always had been, but the gap between twenty-three and thirty is smaller than the gap between sixteen and twenty-three.

She was still something of an innocent. There are two ways that can go with me. Mostly it appeals to my protective instincts, the part of me that might show up on a stranger’s doorstep armed with a hammer. But sometimes, just sometimes, it stirs something primal and ungentle that lurks deep down.

Was that stirring now?

“I need time to think this over,” I said. “Shall we meet up for dinner? Say, Friday night? And no obligation for anything more than that.”

“It’s a date,” she said, and I flinched.


	2. First Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah and Anjali's first date.

_Hey_ _A, I’m running late. Feel free to order. Sorry sorry sorry. - S_

_It’s no problem. Thanks for letting me know._

My lateness was entirely self-inflicted. I’d been nervous all day, trying to work out how to navigate the minefield in which I now found myself, and so I’d been procrastinating until at last my fear of lateness overcame my fear of awkwardness and I got going.

Usually when I can’t figure things out for myself, I go to one of my friends for a sanity check. But Kate was off the grid that week, enjoying a wilderness holiday, and I didn’t feel like I could ask anybody else about _this._ “Hey, so, that girl I used to tutor, the astrophysicist? She’s grown up now and I sort of offered to pay her to be my mistress, and I’m trying to decide whether I meant it.”

I was still wrestling with it all when my taxi arrived at the restaurant. Anjali was waiting outside – I groaned, she must have been there at least fifteen minutes in the cold – and I wasn’t at all prepared for what she was wearing.

Did I mention she was a fashionista? She didn’t have much budget for wardrobe, of course, but she could sew just about anything and she had a cousin who could get her silks at cost. Her dress was eye-catching, a plum-coloured piece that fit her beautifully and drew my eyes to curves that I’d never noticed before. Her hair was up, neatly skewered by a long pin. All in all, she looked fantastic, albeit rather underdressed for the evening chill.

“Hey Anjali! So sorry I’m late.”

“Come on, let’s eat.” She held out her hand, and I wasn’t sure whether taking it was a good idea, but I took it. My fingers are kind of chunky; hers were slender. Cold, too, from the chill air, so I closed my hand around hers as we strode inside.

The food was excellent. Or I think it was? I don’t really remember. I just remember talking too much, the way I do when I’m nervous and trying to act normal, babbling about pointless things just to sound like a normal person who can make perfectly normal small talk.

It was stupid, of course, because Anjali was literally the last person for whom I needed to pass as neurotypical. But it’s a defensive habit, and those are hard to switch off. Eventually I paused to take a mouthful and Anjali took the opportunity to change the subject.

“Sarah, have you heard that the Swedish military is putting bar codes on their warships?

“What? No? Why would they do that?”

“It’s so when they get back to port, they can scan-de-navy-in.”

“Anjali. That was _terrible._ ”

“I know plenty more.” And she regaled me with awful puns until I forgot to be nervous.

At a suitable pause in the conversation I remarked, “By the way, that’s a gorgeous dress. Did you make it?”

“Thank you, yes, I did! I made it two years ago, but I only wear it for very special occasions.” She talked with some enthusiasm about dressmaking, about box pleats and darts and so forth. I’d seen some of her projects on Instagram before, but I’d never heard her talk about how she made them. She had a fascinatingly mathematical approach to it all, treating patterning like an exercise in differential geometry.

As I finished the last mouthful of my main course, she reached out and touched the back of my hand with two fingers. “So, Miriam, now you’ve met me. Tell me, where am I sleeping tonight?”

I closed my eyes. I could think of so many arguments for why this was unwise, exploitative, why I should thank Anjali for a lovely evening and pay for a taxi to take her safely home. And if I really felt benevolent, then I could simply offer to help her out with no expectation of _quid pro quo_.

But she hadn’t asked me. She’d asked Miriam.

What would Miriam do? I thought back to the woman I’d imagined when I created my profile.

Miriam, I thought, had some rough edges. She was a queer woman who’d succeeded in a straight man’s world. She’d made her way up the ladder by hard work, and taking every advantage she could get, and by not giving a damn what people thought about her. She might well show some kindness to a girl like Anjali. (Lily? I don’t know.) But with status comes privileges, and Miriam had fought too hard for her position to pass up those privileges for such a scruple. Miriam wanted; Miriam would take.

And what did I want?

I’m a complicated creature, and “what I want” is so often a tangled mess of what other people think I _should_ want and what I’m afraid of and what I think I ought to want and what I really _do_ want. But sometimes the music gives me a clue.

I love music and it’s always present in my life. Even if you switch off my sound system and take away my headphones, there’ll still be something playing in my head, chosen quite unconsciously to match whatever I’m thinking about at the time. Sometimes that choice tells me more about my own state of mind than anything I can get from interrogating myself. So I stopped trying to think it out, and listened instead to what was running through my mind.

_Tonight, Sweet Gwendoline, do it well, and do it fine..._

I opened my eyes again, and smiled at Anjali, and then I turned my hand over and caught her fingertips in mine. I was probably going to hell for this, but it wouldn’t be a cold hell.

“You’re sleeping in my bed tonight.”

* * * * *

It was a short taxi ride back to my place at Redmond Barry Towers. Anjali and I sat in silence. My bravado had faded, and there were some complicated and unfamiliar feelings to process. It wasn’t the first time I’d taken somebody home with bed in mind, but it had been a while and this time was a very different dynamic to any I’d dealt with before. I didn’t have to be witty, didn’t have to impress, as long as I could pay; that felt liberating, but it also felt quite alien.

We stepped out of the taxi – last chance to send Anjali home, last chance gone with the slam of the door – and I took a deep breath. “Let’s get in out of the cold.”

I live on the twenty-second floor, and the lift isn’t as fast as it might be, so it takes a couple of minutes. Partway through the ride I slipped my arm around Anjali’s waist – I don’t know why, perhaps just to test whether it was allowed – and she looked a little surprised, but she didn’t pull away.

“Are you okay with this?” I said.

She smiled. “I’m fine.”

“Can I kiss you?” I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to kiss her at that moment, but I felt like I had to push at this unfamiliar situation, find out what the rules were.

“Yes, you may.”

I touched my lips against hers, and she nuzzled back; I opened my mouth and tasted her, still strawberry-sweet from the crêpes she’d had for dessert. She settled into the kiss, and I felt the tip of her tongue against my lips and I didn’t know whether I was into it –

 _Ding._ “Twenty-second floor,” said the recorded voice.

“This is us.” My heart was thumping, and I couldn’t tell whether it was the I-want kind of excitement or the oh-god-this-is-a-gigantic-fuckup kind. “Last on the right.” I turned my key and held the door open. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

Anjali walked in and looked around. “Oh, this is very nice! You have so much space!”

“Yeah, I was looking for something a bit smaller, but they built too many of these so I got a good deal on it.” Or rather, my agent did; I’m terrible at that sort of negotiation, and I detest the grind of house-hunting, so I’d hired an advocate and left it in his hands. “Want the tour?”

It’s a two-level apartment, designed for a small family. Most of the space is taken up by a single big kitchen-lounge-dining room, with a big glass window facing out onto the city, and the laundry tucked away behind the kitchen. Above the kitchen is a landing that leads to the bathroom, a child-sized bedroom that I’ve repurposed as a library, and the master bedroom, with a walk-in wardrobe and a queen-sized four-poster bed.

“And this, uh, this is where I sleep.”

“It looks nice.” She touched my hand, talking quietly. “What do we do now? I really don’t know how this is supposed to work.”

“Me neither.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know...I’m just a little bit tense still. Nervous.”

“What if I gave you a massage?”

“Oh, yes please. I never say no to a good massage. Wait up, I think I’ve got a bottle of skin lotion somewhere.”

I found the bottle, gave it to Anjali, and stripped down. Only to my underwear, though; I wasn’t quite ready for nakedness. As an afterthought I flipped my laptop open and started a relaxation mix playing, and then I lay face down on my bed, hands clasped under my forehead.

I felt her climb onto the bed, and then the silk of her dress slid over the backs of my thighs as she knelt astride me. “Close your eyes and relax, Sarah.”

She warmed the lotion in her hands and then started rubbing it into my back, shoulders, neck.

“Mmm, that feels nice. You can rub a bit harder if you like.” I always have knots in my muscles from spending too much time on the computer, and something in there was going _twang_ every time she went over it. I flinched a couple of times, but she soon learned where the tight spots were and approached them with care.

I was enjoying the touch of her hands, and not just her hands. She’d settled back onto her haunches, and I could feel her weight and her warmth on my hips, rocking back and forth as she worked up and down my back. Pleasant, snug, if nothing definitively erotic.

She’d been working around my bra-strap, but now she tapped it with a finger. “Is it okay to take this off?”

“Let me get it, the catch is tricky.” I reached up behind me and unhooked it, giving her clear access to the whole of my back. Then, rather than place my hands back above my head where they had been, I let them rest by my hips – which is to say, against her knees. And as she continued to rub, working her fingertips and her knuckles into the tension points, I began to stroke her legs through that thin silk.

I heard-felt her sigh, but not a bad sigh, and she didn’t pull away. It was my way of saying: this is not just an innocent back-rub between friends, I have designs on you.

Warmth, stroking, slow and rhythmic. Her for me, and me for her, and eventually my hands worked under the dress to touch her more directly. Did she sigh again as my fingers found her stockinged knees, calves, thighs? Did she rub a little harder when stroking with my fingertips became scraping with my fingernails? Perhaps, perhaps.

For a moment I thought to myself that I ought to be careful with Anjali’s stockings. But then the devil on my shoulder said, _wouldn’t it be more fun to wreck them?_ And so I clawed my fingers and raked ladders down her thighs.

She said “oh,” small and soft in her throat.

“Don’t stop rubbing, that feels so good.”

I thought about things to do with her. To her? So many possibilities. But first, I thought, I would tease her, tantalise her until she begged me. I ran my hands over her thighs, seeking out the tender spots that made her wriggle, snagging her stockings again and pulling ladders into gaping holes.

She was leaning forwards now. I didn’t know whether it was so she could put more of her weight into the massage, or to offer more of herself to my hands, and I didn’t really care. I slipped a fingertip inside the top of one stocking, tugged it just enough to get her attention.

I didn’t want the massage to stop. But I’m not infinitely flexible, and there were limits to what I could do face-down with my hands behind my back.

“Stay there. Don’t move.” I twisted under her, rolled until I was on my back looking up at her. I thought she flushed a little – it would be the first time she’d seen me topless – and then she looked curious. She’d noticed the tattoo on my ribs, just below my left breast.

“What is this? It looks like a pentagram. Or a bit like a mandala.”

“I suppose it sort of is. It’s also a minimal-order three-geodetic regular digraph of degree two.” A geometric design in blue and red arrows, chasing one another forever like Ouroboros’ brood.

She stretched out her hand, hesitated.

“You can touch it,” I assured her, and she did, two fingertips following the inked pattern. “I know some of those words,” she said, “but I haven’t done any graph theory since high school. Remind me?”

“Every vertex has two arrows going in – one red, one blue – and two arrows going out. And if you pick any starting point, and take two different paths of length three or less, following the arrows, they won’t meet up again. Every choice has different consequences. And it’s the smallest graph of that kind that can exist.”

When Anjali’s thinking hard, her tongue sticks out just a little bit. It always makes me smile. I felt her fingers moving on me as she tested the truth of what I’d said, touching at one spot and then trying different paths.

“Twenty vertices. Huh. Not fifteen?”

“No. I wondered about that too. But, no, not fifteen, not sixteen, not even nineteen. Twenty is the smallest.”

“It’s beautiful.” Her fingers continued to circle, stirring my skin to wakefulness. “Is there a story to it?”

“There is, but not just now. I’ll tell you another time.” I circled her slight wrist with my fingers, and pulled her hand up so her palm was flat against my breast, and I placed my right hand firmly on her knee.

“Anjali, I want you to be my mistress.” She nodded, slowly, and my shoulder-angel stirred feebly. “Is that what you want?”

“I’m...” She paused. “I’m not sure. I’ve never been anyone’s mistress before! But I think I’m ready to find out.”

“Well, then.” I squeezed her fingers to my breast – _you just keep those there_ – and reached back behind me, pushed against the bed so I was sitting up between her knees, face to face. I kissed her, hard and aggressive, my hand coming up and around to grip the back of her neck and hold her close enough to smudge her glasses. This time I had no doubts about what I wanted. Possession.

I could feel her melting in my grasp, yielding, still palming my breast but unsure what to do with it. My tongue flickered between her lips, forceful, greedy. She didn’t taste of strawberries any more, just herself, and that was quite good enough. I wanted to devour her.

 _Ich bin doch nur ein wildes Tier_ , as the song goes.

“Come on, cutie, stand up for a moment.” We disentangled and rose to our feet; I stood behind her, both of us facing the floor-length mirror on my wardrobe.

“This is a beautiful dress,” I said, stroking her shoulder, “but you’re not going to need it any more tonight. Please take it off.”

The zip was at the back, and I could have helped her – ordinarily I would have – but it’s a vulnerable awkward moment reaching backwards to take off something like that, and I wanted to savour her vulnerability. So I placed my hands on her hips and watched as she fumbled for the zip. As it opened I reached up to stroke the back of her neck and then ran my finger down her spine, following the zipper.

She shrugged out of the sleeves and pushed the dress down over her hips to lie pooled around her ankles on the floor, and stood there in just those owl-spectacles and her underwear, and her stockings.

Her stockings...

“Oh, I _have_ made a mess of you. I’ll just have to buy you a new pair.”

“You’d better. That was my last good set.”

I stepped in close, lifted her hair, kissed the back of her neck, and whispered “Worth it.” Then I ran my fingers down behind her ear, down her throat to her collarbone, and with a fingertip on each side I took hold of the straps of her bra and peeled them off her shoulders.

I slid my hands inside the now-loosened cups, and she exhaled slowly. Her breasts fit perfectly in my hands, her nipples firming as I squeezed them between my fingers.

“Who’d have thought, when I first came to tutor you, that it’d end up like this?” I popped the clasp on her bra, let it fall to be forgotten on the floor.

“Not me,” she murmured. “And absolutely, positively, not my parents.”

“And thank god for that.” I pulled her around to face me, kissed her again. “Come on, you.” I pushed her back onto the bed, climbed back alongside her.

We took our glasses off and made out for a bit, kissing and caressing one another. I nibbled at her throat, kissed my way down to her chest, stroking her breasts lightly with the palm of my hand before I started to use my mouth. A flick of the tongue, a slow lick around the aureole, a nip, and then I sucked her breast into my mouth as my hands squeezed her butt.

“Oh, Sarah, oh.” She was stroking my hair now, and she arched her back as my fingers floated down over her belly, through the first traces of hair, to the edge of her panties. Further down, feeling the tension in her body, and her knees came up as my hand slipped between them. She was warm, and when I began to stroke the inside of her thighs she squirmed. “Ah! Please, I’m ticklish.”

So I slowed, letting her get used to my hand gradually, fingers working through the thin fabric, feeling the shape of her beneath: the soft cushioning of curls, and moving down... gradually she relaxed, and I worked my fingers under the gusset.

“Oh, Sarah...” She was pushing back against my hand just a little, and I took that as encouragement to explore further, working my way towards heat and moisture, unfurling her and stroking her softness until all friction was gone.

I’d let go of her breast now and was lying with half my body over hers, my feet rubbing against hers, my fingers still teasing her. Circle, down, in, out, circle, up, circle...

“Oh, oh.” She craned to meet my lips for another kiss, and I devoured her again. She didn’t notice as I reached under the pillow for the bullet vibe I’d left there days earlier, not when I switched it into my other hand. But when I twisted the end and it began buzzing, _then_ she noticed.

“I’m not s– ooh.”

I’d started gently, holding it tightly so that the vibrations were transmitted to her through my own fingers, still stroking her and opening her and dallying at her entrance, and then slowly I brought it into more direct contact with the sensitive little button my fingers had so recently been teasing. I pinched Anjali’s nipple gently at the same time I pressed just a little harder against her clit, and she squirmed under me.

“Always wondered... what those were like...” She sounded a little breathless.

“A vibe? You’ve never had one?” I was working the pressure in a steady rhythm now, pressing against her hard to send a buzz through her pelvis, easing off, repeat, repeat, repeat.

She shook her head.

“Oh, my poor dear. I will buy you one.” Then I gave her a languid kiss, all the better to feel her breathing coming faster now, rough. She was rocking her hips in time with my hand, hips squeezing me, and I could feel her tension building, sharpening, approaching a point...

I stopped. Drew my hand back, switched off the vibe, and she gasped in frustration.

“Anjali?”

“Please, I was so close...”

I resumed stroking, just enough to sustain her arousal without pushing it over the edge. “Do you want to come?”

“Oh, please, Sarah.”

“Are you sure?” I tweaked her clit ever so lightly, and she groaned. Every time she tried to press herself against my hand, I’d ease off again.

“Please, just let me...”

“Let you what, Anjali?”

“Let me...” She closed her eyes, screwed up her face. “Please, I need to orgasm.” It was very much like her to use the dictionary word.

“Say you’re mine, my kept woman. Say you’re mine to enjoy however I like.”

“Oh, Sarah, I’m your woman, however you like...”

“Very well then.” And I flicked the vibe back on, full power, and worked on her, fingering her, buzzing her, until she gasped, arched, gasp-gasp-squeaked, and I plunged my tongue into her mouth as she came. And then I kept on stimulating her, sending her into spasms, until she was nearly sobbing and I decided to let her come down, and then I wrapped my arms around her and held her as her breathing subsided.

“Don’t forget,” I whispered, “you’re mine now.” I felt her shiver a little, and then she put her arms around me.

“What should I do now for you, Sarah? What do you want?”

I knew what I _really_ wanted, but that would have to wait a little while. When we’d talked about her boundaries, one thing both she and I had agreed on was safe-sex rules for her hypothetical gentleman. Now that I’d stepped in to fill that position, the devil on my shoulder was whispering about how unnecessary those rules were.

It would no doubt have been easy enough to talk her into an exception – “it’s me, you’ve known me for years!” But I knew I’d never forgive myself if I did pressure her to break those rules, while she was so unable to stand up to me. Never mind; there’d be another time.

“Right now...” I kissed her, rolled over to reach my bedside cabinet, pulled open a drawer. “Let me broaden your horizons a little further.”

I slipped off my underwear and replaced it with a nicely-fitting harness that held a medium-sized dildo. Sitting beside her I stroked her legs, from the tops of her feet all the way up to her thighs, and back again; then I eased her legs apart and knelt between them.

“Mmm.” She almost purred when I pressed the tip against her. I pitched forwards and entered her, coming down to press my body’s weight against her; as I stretched out on top of her, bringing us face to face, she brought her legs up and rested her heels on my arse, holding me against her.

“You know how to make a girl feel welcome,” I whispered, and I pressed into her, and for a moment I tried to figure out if it felt different when I was paying for it, but only for a moment before she wrapped her arms around me and kissed my throat.

“You. Are. Welcome.”

I took her slow and deep, and soon enough she came again, and then I did too. That doesn’t usually happen with the strap-on; psychologically it’s a great toy, physically the sensation’s frustratingly almost-there-but-not-quite for me, like trying to get off with the wrong hand. This time, though, I was so aroused that it was more than enough to push me over. I shuddered, and rocked my hips against her slowly to milk the feeling for all it was worth, and then eventually I rolled-fell off her.

We lay there, both exhausted, me sprawled across her legs. “Tomorrow morning we should talk,” I mumbled, and I pulled the quilt over us both, and then sleep claimed me.


	3. Negotiations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah and Anjali set the ground rules for their arrangement. Sarah tells Anjali about her tattoo.

I slept soundly and woke a little after nine o’clock. There was nobody else in the bed, but my skin held memories of warmth and contact through the night. When I pulled on my gown and wandered out to the landing, I found Anjali sitting on my couch, fully dressed and reading a textbook on combinatorial optimisation that I’d left out.

“Morning! Have you eaten?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t want to use your things without asking.”

“Oh! Please don’t worry about that, you’re always welcome to raid my fridge. I hope you haven’t been waiting too long?”

She looked unsure how to answer, and I realised I’d put her in a position where honesty had to wrestle with tact.

“A while, then?” I added.

“I got up around seven.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, you must be starving!”

“It’s okay, Sarah, it’s no trouble.”

I was quite sure that if I’d slept to midday she’d have gone on waiting, no matter how much her stomach growled. “Come on, let’s get breakfast.”

After a bowl of muesli and a glass of juice I was starting to wake up, and I remembered that I had other obligations.

“How you doing?”

“Me? I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

“I’m good... I meant, are we okay? About last night!”

“Oh!” Anjali smiled, and patted my hand. “Yes. I had a lovely evening, thank you. So, are we going ahead with this... arrangement?”

“Yes... well, I want to. But do you?”

“Do you know, Sarah, you’re really _not_ rubbish in bed? Actually you’re quite fun. If you feel like paying me for more of that sort of thing, and treating me a little, I have absolutely no objections.”

I might have blushed a little. “Okay. Er, if you don’t mind me asking, are you bi then? I just had no idea, that’s all.”

“You’re asking about my orientation?”

“Mm-hmm.”

She was holding her glass in one hand, swirling it and watching the juice spin in a little vortex. “To be honest, Sarah, I don’t think I have one. Not the way other people talk about it. I don’t have this feeling of, oh, ‘I want to sleep with guys’. Or with girls. I meet individual people and I get to know them, and I figure out whether I’m interested in that one person. I don’t need to have a general rule for all seven billion people on the planet who I’ve never even met. I don’t understand how anybody does that.”

“Oh. But I’m the first woman you’ve slept with?”

She sipped her juice. “Yes, but you’re the first woman who’s asked me.”

“Fair call. I just don’t want to pressure you into anything that’s not right for you.”

“Oh, Sarah, you are _very_ sweet, but sometimes you overthink things almost as badly as I do. I am an adult and some things I can do for myself.”

I held up my hands. “Point taken. Well, then, shall we work out the details?”

We’d already talked at length about what Anjali was looking for and sketched out an arrangement, back before we had any idea that the other person in the relationship would be me. Much of our discussion was just going over those rules again, figuring out what we could keep and what needed to be changed.

We agreed on a date every fortnight, Friday or Saturday night: me to cover dinner and any other costs, Anjali to stay overnight with all that entailed, and head home after breakfast.

“Wait, what do you mean by ’with all that entails’?” said Anjali.

“You know what I mean. Don’t make me spell it out.”

“I think you should. Daddy said it’s always best to be specific about business arrangements, to avoid misunderstanding and bad feelings later.” Was she trolling me? It’s so hard to tell.

“Uh, okay then. You will give me, ah, the full girlfriend experience.” I swallowed nervously; I could feel the roots of my ears tingling. “Sex.” And I could only think of one way to overcome my embarrassment and re-establish my authority. I leant over and kissed her hard and sudden. “However I want,” I added triumphantly.

“However you want,” she replied, with a catch in her breath. That was going a little further than what we’d previously discussed – I’d never have advised her to agree to something so open-ended with Hypothetical Sugar Daddy – but it was done, and she’d said yes, and I wasn’t going to argue.

“Speaking of ‘however I want’,” I said before my confidence ebbed again, “I really like, um, oral. I know we made barriers a rule before, when we were talking about guys. But with us that means dams, and I’m not a big fan. They’re just a nuisance. Would you be willing to consider alternatives?”

“Such as?”

“Fluid-bonding?” She didn’t seem to recognise the term, so I elaborated. “We get tested for STIs, and then assuming we both come up negative, we don’t need to use them. Obviously we’d need to have rules about outside partners.”

It felt a bit like cheating. Back when we first discussed the idea of her escorting, I’d told her that she mustn’t let any guy pressure her into unprotected sex, because it wasn’t safe to trust him on what risks he might be taking. Now I was effectively asking her to trust me, telling her that this was different.

“Hmm.” She was toying with her glass again, standing it on a corner at the limit of balance. “I need to think about that. Can I get back to you?”

“Sure. Now, about money...”

I knew that what I was offering was close to the bottom of Anjali’s range, and she knew I knew, but it was the most I could reasonably afford. I apologised for that, but she shrugged. “At least I know you’re not a serial killer, and you won’t get offended if I talk about my doctorate sometimes. I can give a discount for that.”

“Thanks, sweetie. And if you do need more help occasionally for something, like your computer breaks down or whatever, I may be able to help. But the budget won’t stretch to diamond rings.”

“I wouldn’t want them. Number one, blood diamonds, number two, I don’t wear jewellery.”

I searched my memory. “Huh. I guess you don’t.”

“I love looking at it,” she added, “but wearing jewellery drives me absolutely mental. It’s so distracting having something like that against my skin. I can’t stop fiddling with it. I have enough trouble finding clothes that don’t annoy me, it’s why I started making my own.” She flipped the hem of her blouse inside-out to show me the stitching, fine and neat. “It’s flat seams or nothing for me.”

“I quite like you in nothing.”

“Yes, well...” She looked a trifle flustered. “I suppose that could be arranged.”

“Well, I guess I should settle up for yesterday.” Somehow that was easier to say than _last night_. I scrounged a hundred from my purse and put the rest through as a bank transfer; in future I’d bring the whole amount in cash.

“Okay, what else do we need to cover?”

We talked through the mundane stuff. What we’d do if she or I were unable to make a date, what to say if we bumped into somebody who knew one of us, or if her parents asked about her finances. (“Not ‘if’,” she said, “when”.) There was just one last thing to negotiate.

“How long do we think this is going to go for?” I asked.

“How long? I am not sure. Do you mean some sort of fixed term?”

“Not like a binding one. Obviously if circumstances change and we need to break this off... I dunno, you meet somebody and want to follow that... I don’t want you to feel locked in. Always free to leave. But I deal with stuff better if I have some idea what to expect. And I guess you’ll want that too, if you’re looking at committing to rental leases and stuff.”

“Oh! Yes, that’s a good idea. How long do you think, Sarah?”

It felt weird to be talking about this as matter-of-factly as if we were trying to decide what sort of phone plan to commit to. “Let’s say... what if we make it a year? And at the end of that we can review, talk about whether it’s working out, whether we want to finish up or renew or change the deal.”

Anjali nodded. “Yes, that seems sensible. Shall we put it in our calendars?”

So we did. Then we said goodbye and I paused, unsure of the etiquette – does one kiss one’s mistress on such occasions? – until Anjali offered a hug, and as she made her way home I sat down to think about what had just happened.

I didn’t feel guilty about it; I wasn’t entirely sure what I _did_ feel. Surprise, perhaps. The idea of paying anybody for sex, let alone Anjali, had never seemed quite real. Yet here we were: I’d offered, and she’d accepted, and somehow we’d committed ourselves to a year of it. Would I ever get used to it, or would it always have this not-really-happening feel?

Meanwhile, I sent Anjali a polite thank-you message and then left her in peace, figuring that she would also want some space to process things.

She called me back two days later. She had thought about the safe-sex question, and after some talk about screening methods and testing windows, she was willing to agree to my request on two conditions.

“First rule, we have to be exclusive with one another. If you do sleep with anybody else you need to tell me immediately.”

“Agreed. And the second thing?”

“You have to find a clinic with no Indian staff. I don’t want anybody gossiping.”

Easier said than done, but I managed to find one that fit the bill, and a few days later Anjali and I met at a sexual health clinic. “If anybody does see you,” I told her, “I’m here for a check-up and I wanted you along for reassurance.” Which was true, as far as it went.

Each of us filled out a questionnaire. It was the first time I’d had to answer yes to the question about paying money for sex, and as a result I got a considerably more thorough check-up than I was used to. A gloved nurse swabbed my delicate bits with a cotton bud, I peed in a jar, and then it was Anjali’s turn. Afterwards we shared a coffee nearby and made plans for our next date.

Anjali had had a long day flat-hunting, so we met up for late dinner at a Thai place a few blocks from my apartment. It had been rainy on and off all day, worsening in the evening, and despite my raincoat I was wiping water from my face as I walked in. Anjali was already there, of course.

“How’s doing?” I asked.

“I am considering ways to murder our departmental admin, but otherwise good.” She told me the story over dinner: admin had lost some paperwork and missed a deadline, which meant Anjali was missing out on a programming course she badly needed to do. It was Python, a language I knew pretty well, so at least I was able to point her at some free resources.

We spent dinner griping about the frustrations of postgrad study and the Melbourne rental market. The rain continued to worsen, and by the time we finished our meal it was really hammering down. My raincoat protected me from most of it, but even with an umbrella Anjali was somewhat damp by the time we made it back to my place.

I switched on the heater and made us both tea, and as we sipped it I chattered some more about programming. After about twenty minutes, Anjali cleared her throat.

“Sarah, is everything okay with us?”

“Um... yes, I think so? Why?”

“This doesn’t feel very much like a date. And you’re monologuing. I think you do that when you’re nervous?”

I sighed. “Yeah, I guess I am. I just, I don’t really know how to switch over from the bit where we’re friends talking about your thesis to the bit where I’m, er...”

“Paying me for my affections?”

“That thing. Yeah. It’s not that I’m not interested! But I don’t know how to break the ice. I know it’s stupid, I just worry about making you uncomfortable.”

Anjali leaned over towards me. “You have my permission. I rather thought I’d already given it to you. Didn’t we already have this conversation?”

“Yeah, you have, you did. But for me, consent isn’t something that just happens and then stays happened forever. Sometimes I need reassurance that it’s still okay, that you haven’t changed your mind. Even if you’ve already told me, I need to hear it again. Does that make sense?”

She nodded. “I think I know what you mean. You want to know that the rules didn’t change without you noticing?”

“Yeah. That.” I sighed again.

She set her teacup aside, rose to her feet, and walked over to kiss me on the lips. “Consider your permission refreshed.”

I reached up to pull her back in for another kiss, running my hands through her hair. “Why, Lily, I do believe you’re _soaked_. Let’s get you out of these wet things.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Rising to my feet, I took her by the shoulder, turning her slowly so I was at her back, and closed my arms around her. As I began to work at the buttons on her blouse, I nuzzled at her neck, and she pressed back against me.

“Mmm. That’s nice...” She pressed her hand over mine.

I swept her hair to one side, the better to expose her soft skin, tickling her throat with lips and breath. We were facing the big window that looked out onto the city; tonight the lights were blurred by rain, and my glass was beaded with wind-blown drops.

Anjali (Lily?) murmured something and turned her head to kiss me, sighing as my hand found her breast, reaching back to stroke my cheek. We swayed together as I undressed her, garments drifting to the floor one by one, and outside the sky flickered—

I counted one, two, three, four, five, and then there was a slow rumble.

“I love storms,” I said, holding her. “I love to sit here on nights like this and just watch the show.”

“Storms scare me.” I could feel the tension in her body.

“I can draw the curtains and put some music on if it’ll help.”

She shook her head. “I’m all right. I feel safer with you around.”

Well, _that_ made me glow a little, deep down inside. Still, she was shivering a little. I chose to interpret it as cold.

“Let’s snuggle on the sofa.” It was big enough for us both to lie full-length, me behind her, both of us still facing the window.

“You’re lumpy,” she said. I’d stripped her down to her underwear, but I was still mostly dressed, and I hadn’t emptied my pockets. My pockets...

“Oh, that reminds me, I have something for you. Two things. Wait a moment.” I got up and shed my jeans, then fetched a gift bag from the kitchen counter.

“Oh?”

I climbed back into my position behind her. “Here you are, sweetie.” I handed her the bag and snuggled against her back, fingers stroking her skin.

She reached into it, and pulled out a packet of stockings. “Oh, thank you!”

“I did say I’d replace them. Besides, I had so much fun with the last pair.”

“Yes, well... now, what else is this?” She up-ended the bag, tipped out a box, and opened it. “A... a rubber duck? Er, thank you?”

“Not _just_ a rubber duck. If you press the back, just here...” I guided her fingers and showed her where to squeeze. There was a muffled click and the duck began to vibrate in her hand. “Press it again to change the speed, or turn it off. It’s waterproof too.”

She giggled. “What a clever idea. You shouldn’t have!”

“Told you I’d get you one.” I let go her hand and slipped my fingers under her bra, began to tease at her breasts, as she turned the duck over, testing its settings, cycling from slow to medium to fast to off. Then the thunder growled again, louder than before, and she shuddered. I squeezed her tight. “I thought I should get you something that won’t scandalise your parents.”

“Good thinking. You know what they’re like.” Mrs Kapadia had a bad habit of inviting herself into Anjali’s room to “tidy up” with the thoroughness of a police search and about as much regard for matters of privacy. “Thank you, it’s sweet of you.”

“Kiss me,” I said, and she turned her head and for a few minutes I enjoyed the taste of her mouth, and my hands moved on her, and by the time we came up for air she’d lost the last of her underthings. “Shall we try it out?”

“You’re the boss,” she said, and that gave me a sinful little tingle. She bent her knee, and slid the duck down between her legs, and clicked it on again, and I held her while she put it to use.

Sex is personal, but masturbation is _private_. I’ve always felt shy doing it in company, even with a lover who knows every inch of my body. Holding Anjali close while she pleasured herself: that made me feel like I was somewhere I shouldn’t be. If there’s something sexier than that feeling, I don’t know what it is.

She fumbled for a bit, perhaps nervous, perhaps distracted by the newness of the situation and the unfamiliar toy, and then she found her groove... so to speak. My palm was pressed against her ribs and I could feel her pulse fluttering, and more than that: the rhythm of her fingers, the soft buzz of the duck, her breath coming rough and shallow.

It was dark outside – or as dark as the city lights and the thunderstorm allowed – and in the window I could just see the two of us faintly reflected, superimposed on the cityscape that stretched out below. Her eyes were closed, whether from shyness or from bliss.

I wanted to do something. Kiss her neck, perhaps, or tweak her nipples, something to make her gasp and fuel her fires. But that would have made me a participant, and that was a different kind of chemistry. Right now what I needed most, from that dark and hungry place deep down inside, was to be the voyeur: to watch as she rubbed herself, drove herself towards that utmost nakedness that comes at the moment of orgasm, both of us knowing that she was doing it because I’d told her to. So, as the lightning flickered in the sky and the wind-flung rain spattered on my window, I kept still and witnessed as her movements became rougher, harder, as sighs became groans became cries, and at the last she quivered and yelped. “Ah, ah, oh...OH!”

Then abruptly she stopped, and pulled her hand away. I knew the signs; she’d become hyper-sensitive, to the point where the slightest touch to her clit would be unbearable. Now I did kiss her at the nape of the neck, and I whispered, “That was splendid, my dear.”

“Thank you?” I thought I saw a blush on her face, although her skin tone made it hard to be sure. “Gosh, that was—”

The room lit up and thunder cracked, less than a second away, a long loud stroke that rattled the windows. Anjali gasped and I hugged her. “Shh. It’s all right.”

I stroked her hair and we cuddled together for a few minutes until the storm had passed over and the thunder was muffled by distance.

“So is this bedtime?” asked Anjali.

“Not yet, my dear. I haven’t had my turn yet.” To be honest, I’d very much enjoyed Anjali’s little exhibition, and I would’ve considered it a night well spent even if it had gone no further. But that’s no reason not to look for more.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, I forgot you hadn’t, we hadn’t...”

“Quite all right. You were distracted.” I chucked her under the chin. “But I did have some ideas about what I’d like to do tonight.” I paused. “Or, I should say, about what I’d like you to do.”

“Let me catch my breath and then I’m all yours.”

“I’m going to take a quick shower, freshen up a bit, and then I’ll see you in my room.”

When I emerged from the bathroom in my dressing gown, Anjali was sitting on the edge of my bed. I gave her an envelope from my desk and waited while she read the letter inside.

“Test results, Sarah Weber... negative HIV, syphilis, gonorrhoea, et cetera et cetera et cetera. All good. Me also, I didn’t think to bring my letter.”

“I trust you.”

She folded the letter, put it back into the envelope, and handed it back to me. “Well, then.” And she looked up at me, waiting for direction.

With one hand I took her chin between thumb and forefinger; with the other I slid her glasses off. “Lily”—she blinked at that, then grinned as she remembered the name—“it’s time you learned how to go down on me.”

“Okay. I’ve, uh, I’ve read a few things online, but I’m not really sure how. I mean, I’ve had it done to me, but that’s different.”

“That’s okay.” I took her by the hand, climbed onto the bed and scooted back, drawing her with me until she was crouching over me; I clasped my hands behind her neck and pulled her in for a soft kiss. “Every woman is different. Even from day to day, it changes. The number one thing is to pay attention to what she wants, how she’s reacting.”

“Okay.”

“Kiss my breasts.” I guided her head down. “Mmm. Yes, like that... feel how I’m pulling you, that means you can go a little harder. You can touch with your fingers, too, that’s nice... you can bite just a bit, too. Just a little pressure. Mmm. Don’t forget your tongue, darling, yes. Like that.”

I stroked the sensitive skin behind her ears, and stroked, and then after a while I took her by the back of the neck, and softly pushed her downwards.

Later, some other night, I would teach her the art of it. The secret places that nobody thinks of as sexual like the back of the knee, full of nerves waiting to be awakened; the subtleties, how to tease with warm breath and soft fingers and strands of her own hair; how to nibble at my thighs and set my skin a-tingle; how to open me slowly, slip her fingers inside me, and curl them just the way I liked it. If she was to be my lover, I wanted her to be an accomplished one.

But not tonight. Tonight I wanted to enjoy her rawness and inexperience. So I drew her down between my knees and whispered, “Lick. And don’t stop until I tell you I’m done.” 

It was fierce, selfish sex. Hadn’t I earned a little selfishness? I guided her head with both hands, controlling her, setting the pace. She was inexperienced but she was eager to please, and I was already wet before I first felt her tongue between my thighs.

At first she was tentative, her ministrations tickling me more than stimulating. But quickly she learned from my reactions that I expected more than that. “Harder, girl.” I punctuated the words with a jerk of my hips, muffling her response. “Lick like you’re being paid for it.” She intensified her efforts, and soon we settled into a rhythm, her tongue lapping up between my lips, sending shivers through me, up to swirl around my clit like she was savouring an ice-cream, and then back down again.

Out of nowhere I imagined myself a _domina_ of ancient Rome, petty and indolent, taking some unlucky serving-girl on a whim. The thought inflamed me, and I ground hard against Anjali’s mouth until she gasped for breath. I let her up to suck in air, one, two, three deep breaths, and then I pulled her down again.

Somewhere the thunder grumbled and I thought of electric charge gathering, building, until at last the force becomes strong enough and lightning surges through the air... and at that moment her tongue flickered against my clit again, and the jolt ran through my body, and I groaned and shuddered as I came.

I held her there, still licking, until the last wave of pleasure had rippled through me, until I was ready to let her up again. Her hair was thoroughly mussed and her face was sticky. I tasted myself when I kissed her.

“Well, that was _most_ enjoyable,” I said. “We’ll be doing that again.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. She sounded drowsy, and I glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight.

“Come on, cutie, let’s get some sleep.”

As we drifted off, my last thought was: _well, that’s the first time a girl’s gone down on me and thanked me for it._

This time when I woke, Anjali was still in bed with me, but not asleep. She was propped on her elbow, looking down at me. She was still quite rumpled, and I thought the dishevelled look rather suited her.

“Well, _you_ look like somebody who’s been thoroughly fucked,” I said.

For a moment she looked startled by my coarseness, and then she grinned, brushing aside a stray strand of hair that had fallen across her face. “I could say the same for you.”

“Mmm.” I ran my hand up her thigh. “By the way, miss Early Riser, next time you stay over... I’ve always thought it would be lovely to be woken up by a cute girl using her mouth on me.”

“Oh,” she said. “Do you know any cute girls?”

“I’m looking at one.”

She stroked my chest with one soft fingertip. “You were going to tell me about your tattoo.”

“I was.” I stroked her hand and closed my eyes, so I could speak without the distraction of seeing her. “So, I was an only child. My parents split up when I was ten, and it wasn’t great for me. I was a pretty insecure kid and I blamed myself. I lived with my mother, and when I was twelve we moved. New school, new town, Aspie kid, closeted and still figuring it out. Not a lot of friends.”

 _Not any_ , in fact, but I didn’t want to say that.

“I got bullied a lot. One of them was a girl called Cassie, a year older than me. Not one of the worst, but not great. Anyway, her dad met my mum at a parent-teacher night, and long story short, a few months later they were engaged, and, well...”

“That must have been difficult for you,” Anjali said.

“Yeah, I was stressing out like you wouldn’t believe. Well, maybe _you_ would. I was just furious at Mum. Told her that she hadn’t thought about me at all, how horrible it was going to be for me living with Cassie. I’d told her about being bullied, but I don’t think she’d really understood how bad it was.

“Anyway, so. I think maybe Mum talked to John and John talked to Cassie, I’m not sure. But a week or so later, she rang up after school and asked to talk to me. I don’t remember exactly what she said, I don’t think it was quite an apology, but she wanted to let bygones be bygones. I thought she was just playing games, but she wasn’t. She stopped picking on me, and then she started standing up for me, and the others eased off.

“Mum and John got married, and we moved into their place, and Cassie and I... we ended up becoming really good friends. Like, people who didn’t know the background just assumed we were sisters. I helped her with her maths homework sometimes, she helped with social stuff and kept people off my back. When I was fifteen she asked me if I was gay and I told her yes. First person in my family I came out to. And she was cool about it.”

Anjali snuggled down beside me, one arm around me. “Well, that sounds quite lovely. I wonder why she changed?”

“I’ve never entirely understood, and by the time I would’ve been ready to ask her about it, she wasn’t around any more. But I think... her mother died a year before I met her, and I think maybe she was still trying to deal with it and acting out. Sometimes people don’t pick the best ways of coping. And then she grew up a bit and decided she didn’t want to be that kind of person any more. Maybe John talked to her.”

“You said she’s not around any more. Does that mean...?”

“Yeah.” This part still hurt to talk about. “Stupid accident. I was seventeen. She’d just started uni, one day she didn’t come home for dinner, a couple of hours later the police knocked on our door. Best guess is she was taking a short-cut across a train line and didn’t hear the train coming. She wore headphones a lot.”

“Oh god, Sarah. I’m so sorry.” Anjali hugged me tight.

“Yeah, it messed me up pretty badly. I just didn’t have the tools to deal with it. I kept going around in circles thinking about how easy it would’ve been to prevent if I’d known it was going to happen. It just didn’t feel fair, such a massive cost for such a little mistake. You know how hard it is to get something like that out of your head.”

She squeezed me again.

“The only thing that got me out of thinking about it... I spent hours and hours working about this maths problem. It came out of history class, of all places. I had a project on historical marriage customs around the world. Have you ever heard of Oneida?”

“Oneida, Oneida, the name rings a bell... don’t they make silverware?”

“Yes, they do now. But back in the nineteenth century they were a fringe-y religious community. They had a thing called ‘complex marriage’ where everybody was married to everybody, and they just brought the kids up together as a community. And, yes, they paid the bills by making cutlery, among other things.”

“Sarah, are you joking?”

“All true. Cross my heart. So, I was thinking about how with a society like that, inbreeding would be a problem. If you don’t know who your father is, how do people avoid sleeping with their brother or your cousin? And then I got to thinking about Australian Aboriginal moiety systems – do you know what a moiety is?”

“Do I... Sarah, I’m Indian, remember?”

“Right, yeah, of course. Sorry. So, some of the Australian Aboriginal peoples have moiety systems too, but they work a bit differently. Indian system... if your parents are Brahmin, you’re Brahmin, right? And the same for other castes?”

“Right.”

“With the Australian systems, moiety still determines who you’re supposed to marry, but you always have a _different_ moiety to your parents. So I realised that could be a way that you could have communal marriages without inbreeding.

“So you split your group marriage commune thing into three moieties. Everybody’s only allowed to have children with people from their own moiety. When somebody from Moiety One has children, the sons go off to Moiety Two and the daughters go to Three. From Moiety Two, the sons go to Three and the daughters to One. And from Three...”

“The sons go to One and the daughters go to Two.”

“Exactly right. So your sons and daughters always end up in different moieties, so if everybody follows the rules you’ll never have siblings hooking up. Well, not opposite-sex siblings, which is where the issue is.”

“Okay... but your son and your daughter’s daughter would be in the same moiety.”

“Right, exactly. So with three moieties you can make sure first-generation descendants don’t interbreed, but you can’t do any better than that. So I tried to figure out what sort of system you’d need to prevent inbreeding down to grandchildren. Spent ages trying to figure it out with pen and paper, got nowhere, ended up programming a computer to do it by brute force. Took a few days to run, but I found the solutions. You need at least nine moieties, and there are four different solutions. And they looked really pretty when I plotted them, sort of like magic circles. Smaller, simpler versions of this.” I indicated my tattoo. “I still have them on disk somewhere, if you want to see them later.”

“I would like to,” said Anjali.

(How often do you find somebody who’s actually interested in that sort of stuff, who’s not just being polite? Not very often, I can tell you that.)

“So then of course I wanted to find a solution for _three_ generations. But the brute-force approach doesn’t work there, because the problem just gets much too big. I played with it for a while, I didn’t get anywhere, and I lost interest, so I left it alone for a while.

“Then Cassie died, and I obsessed about that for several months, just going round and round in my head and wearing myself out. Then one night I came back to that problem and it broke me out of those patterns. Like when you get a song stuck in your head and the only thing that can drive it out is another song... sort of meditative. I thought about it as two kinds of energy flowing into every moiety and mixing and transforming, then two kinds flowing out again to form these cycles that go on forever.”

Anjali stroked my hair, and said nothing.

“I spent months on it, trying out all sorts of different ways to look at the problem. One night I finally cracked it. Took me a few days to code up the idea, and then a few hours to run the program, and voilà.” I touched my tattoo again. “I found this pattern. And the funny thing is, I’d been worried that if I did solve it, then it wouldn’t work for me any more. But instead I felt a lot better about Cassie. Still grieving, but not overwhelming me any more. I’d sort of tied my feelings about her to that problem, so once I solved it I felt like I had a little control over it. And when I was old enough, I got it tattooed on me as a memento of her.”

“What was that like?”

“Well, it hurts a lot. Not a lot of padding on the ribs. But after a couple of minutes I just drifted away to this weird place, in a kind of trance. I could still feel the needle but I didn’t mind it at all. Sounds weird but I kind of wanted it to go on forever. When it did stop I was just exhausted and shaky, but it all felt right. Good pain. And afterwards... I felt like I was carrying Cassie around on my skin, instead of in my head, and that’s a lot easier to live with. It’s a complicated thing.”

Anjali was quiet for a little while, and then she said, “Thank you. All this time I’ve known you and I never knew you’d had a sister.”

“I don’t talk about her often, no.”

“Are you okay?”

“Dunno.”

She paused, frowned in thought for a moment, then spoke. “Did I ever tell you about the time when I was in med school, and a woman showed up at the ER with her son? He’d grabbed a bunch of coins out of her purse and swallowed them.”

“No, I don’t remember that one.”

“She was quite worried. We told her it happens all the time, and she just needed to wait a couple of days for nature to take its course. But three days later she called back.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“There was _no change._ ”

It took me a moment, and then I groaned and hit her with a pillow.


	4. Red Tulips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah buys Anjali a scarf. Anjali discovers Sarah's smut collection.

“Hey Anjali!”

“Hello Sarah, how are you?”

“Oh, not too bad... look, my boss has asked me to go to Holland at short notice. I fly out early Saturday morning. So I’m going to need to postpone our date on Friday week.”

“Oh gosh. That _is_ short notice. For you, I mean. I’m all right to postpone. Why the rush?”

“We’re helping build the business systems for a new container facility at Schiphol. Martin was going to go, he usually does these trips, but he fell down some stairs last week and broke his leg in two places. There’s nobody else, and he thinks it’d look bad if there’s nobody there to represent us.”

“Oh... that makes sense, I suppose. When were you thinking of rescheduling?”

“I get back on Saturday week, so maybe the Friday after that, the 27th?”

“Yes... I suppose that works.” But she sounded hesitant, and a thought occurred to me.

“Anjali, is this going to inconvenience you, if I don’t pay you until the 27th?”

She didn’t reply.

“I can pay in advance if that would help.”

“It might, yes. Thank you, Sarah, I would appreciate that. I’m all right for bills, but I’m still trying to find a flat, and I might need to come up with deposit money in a hurry.”

“Sure, it’s no problem. How is that going, anyway?”

“I’m still looking.” She sighed. “I will be very glad when I can move. We have two new housemates and they are simply terrible.”

We met up for afternoon tea on the day before I was due to fly out. I paid for our orders, and as I returned to the table I gave Anjali an envelope. She looked at it with a perplexed expression. “What is this?”

“Money,” I said softly.

“Oh!” She blinked, then tucked the envelope into her purse. “Silly me, of course it is. Thank you.”

“Everything okay? You seem a bit distracted today.”

She held up her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m just exasperated today. My housemates are maddening.”

Over our coffees she told me the details. Her housemate’s cousin had come to stay, with his girlfriend, “just for a few days”, after they had been kicked out by both his parents and hers. Three weeks later, they showed no signs of moving on, and they had worn through Anjali’s patience.

They left messes on the bench and in the sink. They finished toilet rolls and didn’t replace them. Anjali had searched for an hour for her favourite frying pan, before discovering it in their bedroom full of day-old food. And although nobody had admitted to anything, she was almost certain that they were to blame for the burnt-plastic smell that appeared in the kitchen on the same night her favourite plastic spatula vanished.

“They play their terrible music so loud, and she leaves hair in the shower... ugh! I hate it. I just want my own space and my own things and nobody messing with them.” She was staring at her hands, twirling her spoon, dropping it and fetching it and dropping it again, and I touched her arm and spoke.

“Anjali. Look, I’ll be away for a week. If you want some quiet you could stay at my place while I’m gone.”

“No, I...” She paused. “Really? Do you mean that?”

“Really. Just as a friend thing, not as a... business arrangement. I have to warn you the place isn’t the tidiest just now, I’ve been packing and I won’t have a chance to clean up before I go, but if you can live with that it’s yours for the week.”

“Hmm. I think that might be... helpful.” She squeezed my hand. “Thanks, Sarah, I appreciate this.”

“Well, I don’t want you going to jail for killing your housemates.” I sipped my coffee. “Even if they thoroughly deserve it.”

She wished me well for my trip, and I made arrangements to get her a spare key, and then put her out of my mind so I could concentrate on my last-minute travel panic.

I’m not afraid of plane crashes; I’ve seen the numbers and the risks are very low. For me it’s the petty things that play to my anxieties. Missing the plane, losing my luggage, arriving in a foreign country to find I don’t have a hotel booking, that sort of thing. I check and re-check everything, and it’s only when I feel the plane’s engines kick in that I start to relax, because the next few hours are out of my hands.

They’d booked me in business class, and it’s certainly better than economy—good food, seats that lie flat, a healthy separation from my fellow passengers—but the cabin crew always make me uncomfortable.

It’s not their fault. They’re paid to be charming and attentive, and that’s exactly the problem. Every few minutes some immaculately made-up hostess would stop by to ask if I needed anything, a meal or a drink or a newspaper or anything at all. I couldn’t find a polite way to tell them that all I wanted was to be left alone with my thoughts.

In the end it was easiest just to invent a few whims so they’d feel they’d done their job. So I finished an extra dessert that I didn’t really need, and let them set up the bedding that I could have handled myself, and then lay back feigning sleep.

I was supposed to be thinking about client meetings, working on my contingency plans for our meetings. Instead, I thought about Anjali, sweet bookish Anjali, who I had been paying to wait on me in rather more personal ways.

I still had my qualms about the arrangement. But if my scruples hadn’t stopped me from taking her to bed twice, they weren’t likely to prevent it from happening again. Besides, I told myself, I’d already made a financial commitment and Anjali would be relying on that, so it would be immoral _not_ to go on sleeping with her.

Did I mention I’m pretty good at rationalising things?

I wondered what exactly I felt for Anjali. Was I attracted to _her_? Or to the situation? I’d known her for seven years without thinking of her as a bed-mate, until we stumbled into the possibility together. If the question of money hadn’t come into it, if Miss Anjali Kapadia had simply told me one day that she wanted to kiss me and maybe more, would I have said yes?

Perhaps I would have—oh, let’s be honest, of course I would have. I’m a sucker for women who have the good taste to find me attractive, and she was very much my type in some of the ways that mattered most. Smart, passionate, and _pure_ in a way that has nothing to do with virginity.

Maybe, in some other world, she’d have just asked—or, slightly less improbable, I’d have asked her—and we’d have had something more conventional. But, I thought, it would have been a very _different_ relationship to the one in which we now found ourselves.

It was complicated, and I was in that annoying state of being tired but not sleepy, so I didn’t make any progress in figuring it out. After wrestling with it all for an hour or two I gave up and pulled out my laptop to read the pre-meeting notes and soothe myself with some programming problems.

It’s a twenty-four hour haul from Melbourne to Schiphol, including the stop at Dubai, and even a lie-flat plane seat is no substitute for a proper bed. By the time I wheeled my suitcase out of Customs I was half woman, half shambling zombie. Thankfully my hotel was just a five-minute taxi ride away—after all, our project was at the airport—and it wasn’t long before I crawled into a bed that felt much too big for one person.

The four days that followed were productive, but stressful. I spent most of them in an office building that echoed incessantly with the rumble of jets, talking the finer points of container management with my clients and colleagues.

I wasn’t always sure who was which. We had been subcontracted by Preussler-Kennedy GmbH, a German-American management consulting firm who had a partnership with the Belgian-Dutch-Swiss consortium who ran the container facility, and every time I tried to understand how it all fitted together, my eyes started to glaze over. It doesn’t help that I’m a little face-blind. From the agenda I knew there was a Roy and a Jonathan and a Holger in the room, but I had trouble remembering which was which.

Mostly I just kept my mouth shut and did my best to look like I was listening. That is to say, I concentrated on nodding and modelling Normal Person Body Language and making eye contact, which didn’t leave me with much processing power to follow what people were actually saying. I would have been in trouble if anybody called on me for comment, but thankfully nobody did. On Monday and Tuesday we went out for dinner and I made superficial conversation for a couple of hours, then pleaded jet lag and retreated to my room to decompress with my computer.

But on Wednesday I got my moment in the spotlight, thanks to Miep. She was from the Dutch contingent, the only other woman in the room, which made it easier for me to remember who she was.

“I would like to ask about a technical issue,” said Miep. I shut down my game of solitaire and pricked up my ears. “We have customers who would pay a premium for retrieval and dispatch on short notice. Perhaps somebody is willing to pay ten per cent extra for guaranteed three-hour despatch, or twenty per cent for one-hour. Can we support that?”

Before I go on with that conversation, let me explain a few things.

A container facility is basically your hoarder grandpa’s garage on a grand scale: boxes crammed in as dense as can be, piled in stacks ten high. Except that the boxes are steel shipping containers, twenty or forty feet long, and instead of piling up and staying there forever, most of them have somewhere to go. A truck drives in, a crane picks up the container and stacks it somewhere convenient, a few hours later a ship docks and another crane loads it onto the ship. Meanwhile, we’ve loaded something else on the truck so it’s not wasting petrol going somewhere without a cargo.

Part of the magic that I get paid to perform is ensuring that when that ship comes in, the container is on the top of its stack and not buried under nine other boxes – because unstacking all those boxes to get to it wastes time, and time is money. It’s a complex bit of mathematical choreography, planning which containers get stacked where and which cranes service them, so that when we pick up the containers for an eight a.m. despatch the containers for nine a.m. are waiting underneath them.

Oh, and by the way, some of these containers are extra-heavy, so we can’t put them too high up in the stack. Some of them have hazardous materials and can’t be stored close together. And so on, and so on. It’s an intricate dance with hundreds of rules, and fortune favours the flexible.

Now, let’s pretend you’re in the tulip business, growing acres of flowers in the fields of Holland and exporting them to the USA. Refrigeration technology is better than it used to be, but tulips still don’t like long sea voyages; if you want to deliver the freshest possible, your flowers should travel by air, and airfreight is expensive.

But sometimes it isn’t. Airfreight companies aim to fill their planes every time they fly, but it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes they don’t manage to sell all their capacity, or somebody cancels a shipment with twelve hours’ notice. Either way, they have space to sell and they need to sell it in a hurry.

If you’re smart enough and nimble enough, you can make that work for you. Park your container full of tulips in a container facility near the airport, keep an eye out for last-minute bargains, and hey presto! Massively discounted shipping.

Of course, this only works if you can get your tulips out in a hurry, as soon as that opportunity opens up. The faster you can react, the more you can save.

So that’s what Miep wanted to know: can we arrange operations so we can get those tulips out of storage in a hurry whenever the owner calls for them, without getting in the way of everything else that needs to move through the container facility?

“Well,” said Roy (or was it Jonathan?), “that’s not part of our—”

I leaned in, waving my hand, and people looked at me as if one of the chairs had just grown a face. “We haven’t done it before,” I said, “but I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m pretty sure we can. If I can just borrow the projector a moment, I can show you a demo of how it might work...”

And I did. It was just a quick-and-dirty prototype, but it was still enough to wow them and put a smile on Miep’s face.

“Did you really write that on the spot?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I read your slides, and it seemed like an interesting problem, so I did a little work on it last night.” _And the night before, and in the daytime when everybody else was talking._ But I didn’t say that bit, and after that everybody took a bit more interest in me.

By the time we wrapped up on Thursday afternoon we had tentatively agreed to develop software to support what Miep had asked for, and I even got an enthusiastic email from Martin: “Jonathan says you made quite an impression. Nice work!” All the same, I was very relieved when I was able to farewell my colleagues and head back to my hotel for my last night before returning to familiar surroundings.

I had several hours to kill in the airport on Friday morning, and so I browsed the duty-free shops. I was about to congratulate myself on having run the gauntlet without buying anything more than an ornamental box of chocolates, when I foolishly wandered into an art-gallery gift shop.

They had all the Dutch standards: Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Mondrian, even Escher, in T-shirts and posters and coffee mugs. But what caught my eye was a display of scarves from a recent Art Nouveau exhibition. They were beautiful, elegant patterns in rich colours. I wanted to buy all of them, even though I knew very well that I never wore scarves and anything I bought would end up forgotten at the back of a cupboard.

“One hundred per cent silk,” said the shop assistant approvingly, and the metaphorical angel on my shoulder whimpered. I have a thing for silk.

“How much are they?”

She named the price, almost eighty euros, and I sighed to myself. That was just far too much money for something I wasn’t going to use. I was about to make my excuses when she caught me.

“Are you shopping for yourself, or for a friend?”

 _If I buy it for somebody who’ll use it, it’s not really a waste, is it? Then it’s an act of generosity, not greed. And there are half a dozen beautiful scarves here that I_ want _to buy, so if I only get one... really, that’s quite frugal. I’m practically saving money._

“A friend,” I said, and the angel on my shoulder threw up her hands in disgust.

“What colours does your friend like?”

I reached out and touched one of the scarves, felt its softness, ran my fingers down to the hem, so neatly sewn I could barely feel it. That reminded me of somebody.

“All kinds of colours.” I ran my hands through folds of cream, apple-green, apricot, sea-blue, charcoal. “But she looks very good in red.” And I examined a tessellated pattern of crimson-blushing tulips so vibrant I felt they might bruise if I touched them roughly. 

“That one is my favourite.”

Reader, I bought it. I battled with my conscience a little longer, but in the end the desire to buy and to have won out, and a few minutes later the shop assistant was ringing up a sale and folding it into a little box for me. “I hope your friend likes it!”

Perhaps because I didn’t have a meeting to worry about at the other end, I actually managed to sleep for a few hours on the return flight. We had another stopover for a few stifling hours in Dubai—the air conditioning was struggling to keep up with the heat—and by the time I boarded my connection to Melbourne I was unpleasantly sweaty.

We landed in Melbourne at ten p.m. on Saturday night, and after getting through the formalities it was close to midnight by the time I got to my apartment. I was just glad to be home, ready to unwind in the first real solitude I’d had for almost two days. I wasn’t expecting to walk through the door and find Anjali sitting in my lounge room, looking embarrassed.

“Hi Sarah, I’m sorry, I know I said I’d be gone before you got back. Is it okay if I stay on the sofa just tonight? I promise I’ll go in the morning.”

I wasn’t thrilled about this. I don’t like surprises, and my social batteries were well and truly trained. Just at that point dealing with anybody, even someone who I liked as much as Anjali, felt like an imposition. But I didn’t think she’d be asking without reason.

“What’s up?”

“I’m sorry, it’s stupid. I got a cold and I was trying to prepare for a review but Professor Cheng’s away at a conference and he’s not answering his emails and I found a nice flat but I didn’t have my ID with me and by the time I got it somebody else had already—”

I held up my hand. “Hang on, hang on. Stop a moment. I know I asked, but I didn’t realise there’d be so much. Anjali, I’ve been travelling and I’m sweaty and gross... look, you can stay the night, but I’m going to need a wash before we have this discussion, okay?”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“I’m not mad at you, I just need a moment. And a loo break.”

As I did what I needed to do, I heard Anjali’s footsteps coming up the stairs. Then some noises from the bathroom next to me, and the sound of water running. I flushed, and emerged from the toilet to find Anjali waiting for me, and the bathtub beginning to fill.

“I thought you might want a bath?”

I was about to say no, I was planning to have a shower, because I didn’t want to marinate in my own grime. But I had a feeling I knew what she was doing, because I’ve been there myself: you feel like you’ve fucked up, and you don’t really know what to do about it, so you’re trying to make amends in any way you can.

“Thanks, that’s a lovely thought. I might rinse off in the shower first, and then a bath sounds really nice.”

“Do you put anything in the water?”

“I don’t usually, but hang on...” I rummaged in a cupboard. There, at the back: a bath bomb my aunt had given me two Christmases ago. As with most of her presents, it was violently pink. “I have no idea what this will be like, but let’s find out.”

I dropped it in the tub, and then took off my glasses. I turned my back to Anjali as I undressed; I’m not especially shy about nudity around female friends, but it was the first time I’d been naked in her presence outside the terms of our arrangement, and it felt a little weird. It didn’t take long before steam fogged the shower screen, and then I no longer had to worry about modesty.

From the colour of the bath bomb, I’d expected it to smell of fake strawberries. But the scent that began to creep into the shower was subtler than that, more like cloves and cinnamon. Not a pink smell at all; really quite pleasant.

After a couple of minutes in the shower I emerged, clean enough to enter the tub, but the tub wasn’t ready for me. “Sorry,” said Anjali, looking away from me, “it’s taking a while to fill.”

“Anjali, you don’t need to apologise for the laws of fluid dynamics.”

“Sorry. I mean...” She sighed. “Never mind. It hasn’t been a good week.”

I wrapped a towel around myself. It seemed pointless to dry myself just to hop into the bath, but it was easier than trying to untangle my thoughts about the whole nudity thing just at that moment.

“Well, just let me get in the bath and then you can tell me about it.”

The water was rising, covered in a thick foam of pink-tinged bubbles. When it seemed high enough to give some degree of coverage I climbed in, leaving the towel behind. I sat upright at the back of the tub with my knees drawn up against my chest, perhaps for modesty’s sake, perhaps just to keep my toes away from the hot water that was still running in.

Anjali sat on the floor beside the tub, and talked, and I wanted to invite her in to share it with me. Perhaps it would have been just two friends sharing a tub—it was large enough to do so in comfort—and nothing more than a way to help her relax. I wasn’t really sure, and so I held back, and listened, interrupting only to turn off the water when the tub was in danger of overflowing.

Her story was a catalogue of mishaps and nuisances. She was supposed to be writing an academic presentation, but couldn’t get guidance from her advisor; she needed to put in an application for a possible flat, and was intimidated by the paperwork involved; the landlord at their current place was claiming they were behind on their rent; half a dozen other things that I don’t now remember.

None of them were major in their own right, but multi-tasking is not our strong point, and their combined weight had brought her to a minor meltdown. She had been sick for a couple of days—I suspected the stress had contributed to that—and had stayed in my apartment instead of going in to the office. With every day she stayed home, going back in seemed more intimidating, and so she had lost a week without making progress on any of the things that she’d been worrying about.

I clasped her hand with my own, soapy water and all, and I reminded her that none of these things were the end of the world, and that she could deal with them one by one. Here and there I was able to give more direct advice.

“So instead of asking Professor Cheng if he’s okay with you presenting these slides, you can word it like this: ‘Dear Professor, here are my slides, please let me know by Friday if you want me to make any changes.’ That way, if he doesn’t reply, you’re good to go.”

“Oh! I see what you mean. That’s very clever, I think I can use that a lot.”

We talked through the other issues, and then eventually I said, “Water’s starting to go cold, I suppose I’d better get out.”

“Of course.” She stood up and gave me my towel, looking away once more as I dried myself again, eventually turning back once I’d wrapped the towel around myself. “Oh dear,” she said.

“What?”

“Sarah, you have glitter all over you.”

I’m pretty blind without my glasses, and I hadn’t noticed it in the water, but as I brought my hand to my face I saw the shiny flecks catching the light. “Oh, for crying out loud.”

“It suits you.”

“Hah. Oh, that reminds me, I have something for you.”

Once I’d tied on my dressing gown, I gave her the small box that the gift-shop lady had wrapped. Anjali untied the ribbon, lifted the lid, drew out the silk and held it out; then she closed one hand until her thumb and fingers formed a loop, and drew it through, feeling it slide over her skin.

“Oh, Sarah, this is beautiful. I adore tulips. Do you know they’re the most romantic flower?”

“Not red roses?”

She shook her head. “Tulips. Two-lips. Get it?”

I groaned. “You’re terrible. Now go to bed, it’s one in the morning. Are you okay with the sofa?”

“I’ve been sleeping there all week. You weren’t here, so.” She leaned in and suddenly hugged me. “Thanks for talking, Sarah.” Then she went downstairs, and I plodded off to my bed.

For once, thanks to jetlag, I woke before Anjali. I sat up and read for an hour or two. When I heard her moving about downstairs I came down to say hello, and we breakfasted together.

“Sarah,” she said, “I wanted to ask you about that scarf...”

“Oh?”

“Is it for me, or for Lily?”

That caught me unawares. “I’m... let me think... I’m really not sure, to be honest. Whichever you’d like, I guess.”

She nodded. “I have some idea what it might have cost you. I think perhaps it might be more appropriate for Lily. Besides, tulips are a kind of lily.”

“Really? I had no idea.”

“Family _Liliaceae_ , tribe _Lilieae_.”

“Impressive.”

“ _The Girl’s Encyclopædia of the Garden_ , 1927 edition. I read that one a few times. It had lovely colour plates... Sarah, you said before, you needed to know when you had my permission?”

It took me a moment to realise she wasn’t talking about the previous night, but an earlier conversation. “I remember.”

“Allow me to propose an idea. When I am wearing that scarf, you may consider me to be Lily, and I am at your service. The rest of the time, I’m Anjali, and we are friends.”

“Huh.” I gave that some thought. “Okay, yes, that could work.”

“Splendid. Well, I suppose I’d better pack my things.” She checked her watch. “I should be able to make the nine-thirty train.”

“How are you feeling this morning?”

“Much better, thanks. I feel a bit silly about everything.”

I shook my head. “I promise I don’t think you’re silly.”

She smiled. “Now, speaking of Lily, are we still on for Friday?”

“Oh, yes. I haven’t planned anything yet, I’ll let you know, but definitely Friday.”

“Looking forwards to it!”

She left soon afterwards, and at last I was alone. That’s when the emotional hangover really started to hit, a week of high-power social interaction working its way out of my system. I left my phone on silent, let Martin know I was jet lagged and wouldn’t be in on Monday, and settled in for a couple of days of absolute solitude.

On the Tuesday I was feeling recovered enough to go in to work for half a day. In the evening Anjali messaged me:

_AK: Hi Sarah, how are you?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: not bad, mostly over the jetlag. Caught up on laundry. Still picking glitter out of my hair. You?_

_AK: Good, thank you. We sorted out the rent situation, the landlord forgot to record our payment but we found the online payment._

_AK: I have a question for you_

_AK: last week, when I was procrastinating at your place, I checked out your library_

_AK: I noticed some books_

_AK: the ones with naked ladies. And ropes and so forth._

_PrincessOfParallelograms: Ah._

Welp. She’d found my small collection of bondage art books. I didn’t exactly lock them away, but I kept them discreetly towards the back of the library, on a high shelf and sandwiched in between some larger books so the casual observer would never notice them.

Of course, as I’d realised in hindsight, Anjali was the last person on earth who’d be content with observing a library _casually_.

_AK: An interest of yours?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: ...I suppose you could say that._

The notification showed me she was typing, typing, but it was a very long minute or two before she sent her reply.

_AK: Sarah, is that something you would like to do with Lily?_

Suddenly my heart was thumping, hard.

_PrincessOfParallelograms: what would she say if I did?_

_AK: I think she might be willing to try some of it._

_AK: Not all the things in those books. Some of them looked a bit impractical._

_PrincessOfParallelograms: ...you read all of them?_

_AK: Oh yes._

_AK: BTW, did you decide what you would like to do for Friday night?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: well, I hadn’t, but I have NOW._

_AK: ;-)_

_AK: oh, real estate agent calling, gtg. Later!_

It was a long three days before our date night.

We met at a tapas restaurant. They were brand new and trying to attract clientele, so I’d scored a discount coupon. I arrived five minutes early; fifteen minutes later, Anjali walked in.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, although by my standards ten minutes late was the height of punctuality. “It took me a while to get away from the office, and I wanted to change.”

She was wearing a rather splendid-looking dress, yellow and orange with some fancy box-pleating, but what really caught my attention was the sash she wore around her waist.

A red silk one, with tulips on it.

“That’s quite all right. How’s it going? Did you get any feedback from your professor?”

“Oh, yes. Today, at eight minutes to five. That’s why I’m running late.” She shrugged. “But my slides are all ready. Now I just have to deliver it.”

“You’ll do fine. I know what you’re like when you’re talking about something that interests you. Just remember not to go too fast.”

She smiled. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. But I’m stressing out about it. Could we please not discuss it tonight?”

“Sure thing.”

After we’d placed our orders, Anjali reached into her bag and pulled out some folded sheets of paper. “I don’t know how you want to do it, but I thought perhaps it would be useful to work through this...”

I opened it up and chuckled, then checked around us to make sure nobody was looking. It was a printed list of about a hundred different BDSM activities.

“So we go through it,” Anjali said, “and each of us says how interested we are in each thing.”

“What, here?”

“Unless you’d rather have a bit more privacy,” she said. The place had been filling up as we talked, and just then another couple sat down beside us.

“Oh, I think we’ll be okay.” I took out a pen and pointed at the first item on the list. “So, what about this one?”

“Tried it once, didn’t enjoy it, but that might have been the situation. I could give it another go if you want to.”

I shrugged. “I’ve had fun with it sometimes, but it’s not something I get hugely excited about. Okay, this one?”

“Scary.”

“Good scary or bad scary?”

She considered. “Bad scary, sorry.”

“No need to apologise. There are no wrong answers. And it’s not really my thing either. Okay, so if that one’s out I’ll assume this next one’s also out... how about this one?”

“Yes, within reason. Visible, erm, b-r-u-i-s-e-s might be hard to explain. You?”

“Receiving, sometimes. I love giving.” I smiled at her, showing my teeth, and she smiled back. Then I jumped, just a little, as I felt something brushing my calf. Something very like her stockinged toes.

The couple next to us were talking. I could hear every detail of their holiday plans, so no doubt they could hear us just as well.

In the margins on the first sheet, I wrote: _bad girl_.

Anjali reached for a pen of her own from her handbag.

_What happens to bad girls?_

_Spanking, for starters._

She nodded, then turned over to the third page of the checklist, and drew a large smiley face next to “Spanking” before flipping back to page one. Her toe stroked upwards to the back of my knee.

We worked through the list item by item. Yes, no, yes please, maybe, need to think about that one, need to look that one up, and all the while Anjali’s toes caressing my legs.

_You are being quite distracting._

_Oh! Am I?_

She didn’t stop, though, so I just soldiered on as best I could. “Next one?”

Anjali squinted at the list. “Not applicable, I would have thought...?”

“Oh, no, it’s quite possible, it just takes some artificial help. I’ve dated a couple of ladies who were very much into that.”

“Oh. Well, all right, then. I think I’d be okay with that.”

“Cool.”

And so on and so forth, with Anjali continuing her surreptitious distraction until at last I darted my left hand down under the cloth and caught her by the big toe. She could’ve pulled free, no doubt, but she didn’t try very hard.

_This little piggy came back to my place._

“I’m quite attached to that little piggy.”

_Well, then..._

We didn’t stick around for dessert, and I had some difficulty keeping my hands off her on the way home. Neither of us had been drinking, but she was giggly enough that I’d have taken her for tipsy if I didn’t know better.

I walked into my apartment ahead of her, and as soon as she was inside I turned and pushed her back against the door, my hands on her shoulders. She squealed in surprise, but I swiftly silenced her with a kiss. As she brought up her hands instinctively, I grabbed her wrists and pulled them up above her head.

“Oh my,” she said, when at last I let her breathe again. “You know how to make a girl feel wanted.”

I kissed her again, nipping at her lips, stroking her cheek and running my hand back to catch her by the hair. “You’ve been teasing me all night. Now it’s time to deliver.” I dragged her towards my couch.

“Ooh, ow! Wait, let me get my shoes off before I twist my ankle!”

I paused, just long enough for her to kick them off. “Now, Miss Lily, off with your things.”

“Won’t. You can’t make me.”

I yanked her hair.

“Ow! Okay, okay. You don’t have to be so mean about it.”

“Don’t have to. But I want to. Now, hurry up, girl. You can keep your underwear, for now. Everything else off.”

I tugged the scarf loose from around her waist and draped it around her neck, so it wouldn’t get in the way as she shed her dress. She obeyed, shedding her fine clothes, and I wondered once again whether it would ever stop seeming magical, that such a marvellous and unique creature should be at my command.

Soon enough she stood before me in her bra and panties. Perhaps remembering our first time together, she’d taken off her stockings, but...

“Everything off, I said. Everything but the underwear.”

She looked confused, flustered, just how I wanted her. “But I’ve taken everything—”

With my forefinger, I tapped my own glasses.

“Oh. Sorry.” She took hers off, put them down on my coffee table, and stood there blinking the way we myopes do. I picked them up, careful not to smudge the lenses—I may be sometimes a bitch, but I’m not a _barbarian_ —and strolled over to one of my bookshelves, stretching up to place them a few inches out of Anjali’s reach.

“You’re evil,” she said.

I bowed, straightened again, and strode towards her. “Turn around.” I drew her hands behind her back, then slid the scarf down from her neck and looped it snugly around her wrists. “Pick a safeword, if you please.”

“Oh, gosh... what about ’Schwarzchild’?”

“Ha. Yes, that will do very well.” I knotted the scarf, firm but not too tight; the last thing I wanted was to stretch the silk. “How’s that? Not too tight?”

She wriggled her hands. “No, that’s good.”

“Excellent.” I sat on the sofa, pulling her down to lie across my lap. “Guess what happens now, cutie?”

There was a tremor in her voice. “You’re going to spank me.”

“Mmm-hmm. Do you think you could get away, if you tried?”

She wriggled, but I had one hand on her back, the other on her thighs. “...no.”

“No—what?”

“No...mistress?”

“Good girl.” With my left hand I ran one finger up her spine, tickling the back of her neck, and with my right hand I stroked her bum, beginning to pat her lightly. “Now, do you know why you’re about to be spanked?”

“Oh... because I was bad, and I teased you?”

“Uh huh. Why else?”

“...because it was on the checklist?”

“That also. And?”

She hesitated, no doubt distracted by my fingers, which were dawdling at the juncture of her buttocks. “I’m sorry, I don’t know, mistress.”

“Because it pleases me, sweetie.” I stroked her face, ran my finger over her lips, slipped a fingertip between them. “Because I want you to squeal... oh, by the way, Lily, any time I put something in your mouth, you have a job to do.”

She pursed her lips around my finger and sucked it into her mouth, warm and wet and yielding.

“That’s a good girl. You want to be my good girl, don’t you?” I was stroking down her perineum now, and she flinched, and my fingers slipped down between her thighs. I could feel her heat there, and the cloth was getting damp. She mumbled “mmm-hmm”.

“Bad girls get _punished_ , Lily.” I squeezed her in a very sensitive location, and she squirmed. “But you know what? It’s just as much fun to hurt good girls. I don’t need a reason.” I wiggled my finger against the tip of her tongue, and then I withdrew it, clamping my left hand over the back of her neck, pinning her face down, as I raised my right. “Let’s begin.”

I brought my hand down with a crack, and she squealed and jumped, every muscle stiff, then softened again in my grasp. Again, on the other buttock, and again, and again, and every time she gasped and struggled for a moment before giving in once more.

After a few minutes of this, I paused the spanking in order to unhook the clasp of her bra. With her wrists bound, I couldn’t get it all the way off, but that didn’t matter; her breasts were exposed, to rub against the sofa’s suede every time she moved, and I didn’t intend to let her keep still for long.

Next I tugged her underwear down, halfway to her knees, exposing her buttocks – I took a moment to appreciate their blush – and I ran my fingers up between her legs. Yes, she was quite wet, and I made sure she knew I’d noticed, working that slickness around a little before slipping two fingers into her. She sighed.

“Something wrong, dear?” I asked, fingers curling and stroking.

“N-no, mistress.”

“Good.” I drew my fingers out of her, sliding them over her clit—she gasped again—and then twisted around to run them over her lips and slip them into her mouth. Obedient to my previous instruction, she promptly began to suck them, running her tongue around and between them.

“Good girl.” I stroked her hair with my other hand. “So good.” Then I began to play between her legs again, just long enough to get her wriggling once more, before I resumed her spanking. The raised hand; the smack of skin on skin, and a soft cry; the handprints on her body, changing colour as briefly-displaced blood rushed back. Between blows I teased her mercilessly, sometimes toying with her breasts, sometimes with her clit, sometimes finger-squirming inside her, always with the goal of bringing her _almost_ to the edge before easing off, and returning to the spanking.

“Oh, please, Sarah, I can’t take much more of this.”

I paused again, stroking her backside, which was now quite warm to the touch. “You want me to stop?”

“No, not _stop_ , let me... let me finish. I’m _so_ close.”

I brushed her face, and felt something wet. A tear? But she didn’t seem upset, just dishevelled. “I think you’ve earned it, darling.”

I slid my fingers into her one more time, then out again, and back down to tease at her clit. Her thighs squeezed me as if she was trying to break my wrist. Thankfully I have strong fingers, and even with my hand held captive I was able to work her, methodically and ruthlessly, gauging my movement by the sound of her breathing.

She started to shudder, and her body arched. “Oh, oh, oh... OH! OH!” Then she trailed away into silence, melting into me.

I rubbed her arse gently, soothing the hurts I’d inflicted, and stroked her hair. “How are you doing?”

“Mmm.” She stretched, as best she could in her predicament, and relaxed again. “Very nicely, but my shoulders are getting a bit uncomfortable.”

I untied Anjali’s wrists and helped her stand. She stood there, a little wobbly on her feet, rolling her shoulders. Her bra still hung loosely around her; I helped her out of it.

“Glass of water?”

“Oh, yes please.” She followed me over to the kitchen and I filled a glass for each of us.

When she’d emptied her glass, I held out the scarf to her. “By the way, you’re not finished with this yet.”

“Oh.” Was that amusement in her voice? She accepted the scarf, held it in both hands. “What did you have in mind?”

I reached out and stroked her forehead, ran my fingers down her cheek. “I thought you might use it to tie back your hair. Now, I expect you’re still feeling a bit sore?” I slid in close, took a handful of her backside, squeezed, and she winced.

“Ra-ther.”

“So I thought instead of having to sit, it might be nice for you to spend some time on your knees.”

It took her a moment – I think she was still a trifle dazed – but she figured it out. “Yes, mistress.” Then she leaned in and kissed me, and I led her up the stairs to my bedroom.


	5. I Hear The Roar Of The Smoke Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anjali goths up nicely. Sarah has boots.

Warmth. Sleepy half-conscious warmth, that all-suffusing glow that seeps through the body and looses every knotted muscle. Sometimes it comes from a hot bath or an electric blanket. And sometimes it comes from sleeping in somebody’s arms, skin against skin, when the bodies fit together just right.

Half-asleep – no, nine-tenths asleep – I felt the changes as Anjali woke: the shift in muscle tone and breathing, the pause as she yawned and stretched. Then she placed her palm on my hip and slid down my body, to wake me the way I liked best, and I curled my fingers in her hair.

Afterwards, as we lay side by side in the afterglow, I felt Anjali chuckle.

“What’s so funny, cutie?”

“I was thinking about my first job. I was fourteen years old, working in my auntie’s grocery shop. She got _so_ cross with me because I never could just do what I was told. I always had to know the reason. She told my mother I was disobedient, but I really wasn’t. I just had to ask questions. And now look at me, doing whatever you tell me to.”

I stroked her under the chin, kissed her. She tasted of me. “And why is that, my dear?”

“Mmm. Because I trust you. I can switch off and let you make the decisions. Do you know how _nice_ it is just being able to let go for a few hours and not having to worry about choices?”

Aspies are creatures of habit, and over a few months we’d settled into a routine. Does that sound dull? It shouldn’t. Routine is comforting, sometimes too much so.

Friday or Saturday night I’d take Anjali out to dinner somewhere nice, usually one of the same two or three places that we both liked, and we’d chat about my work and her PhD project. Afterwards we’d head back to my place for an evening of transactional intimacy, and in the morning after breakfast I’d pay Anjali and kiss her goodbye, and we’d go back to our normal lives for another fortnight.

Her life had settled down somewhat. At long last she’d found a flat and moved out of her share place. I didn’t ask her about her finances, but I understood she was banking a sensible percentage of the income from our regular liaisons, and no doubt having a nest-egg contributed to her peace of mind.

Meanwhile, she was becoming more comfortable in her studies. I’d been slow to recognise it, but Anjali had been going through the same process I always have in a new job. We’re what you might call a long-term investment, tortoises in a world of hares. Throw us into something new and at first we plod along, learning slowly while the neurotypical folk outstrip us. But down the road, as their learning curves begin to taper off, we keep on absorbing more and more.

Anjali was now catching up with the hares. Month by month her confidence grew as she started to believe she might actually know what she was doing. She talked less and less about the frustrations of her studies, and more and more about the rewards. Sometimes at night we’d lie together in the dark as she talked to me about the dynamics of neutron stars, star-quakes ripping through mountains of crushed iron a few millimetres high, and about her ideas for how she might test her theories.

All in all, the two of us had settled into what seemed like a stable orbit, wandering planets who’d captured one another... until another little nudge set something new in motion.

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t a goth. Until age fifteen I didn’t know there was a name for it, but I’ve always been fascinated by tombstones, black and silver and blood-red. In my bookshelves there are worlds full of magic and terror; heroines in love with vampires, and heroines who _are_ vampires; Dream-lords alliterating with Delirium and Despair; creatures of forbidden sensation, with such sights to show you. My wardrobe is a sea of black with a few islands of colour, mostly business-wear and things other people gave me. And my music collection... well, you get the idea.

Anjali, who preferred her entertainments far more upbeat, found my tastes a little baffling. She did her best to understand, and I tried to explain, but truth is, I don’t really know where it comes from. Not from childhood trauma; if anything, I eased off a little when Cassie died, too distracted to keep up with my hobbies.

Perhaps it’s a way of facing one’s fears. You can’t very well be afraid of the monster under the bed if you _are_ the monster under the bed. Perhaps the centres of the brain that deal with pleasure and sorrow are not so far apart, and the one can feed into the other? Perhaps it comes from the same place as my tendency to identify with the almost-human, that autistic feeling of being a visitor from some other world?

I have a dozen theories, all of them plausible, none guaranteed true. I don’t know, and I’ve come to peace with not knowing. Somewhere in my early thirties I finally realised that ‘I enjoy it and it’s not hurting anybody’ is all the justification I need for liking something.

But Anjali was insatiably curious, so once again I was doing my best to convey to her the things that I didn’t really understand myself. I tried showing her Crimson Peak one night and she stuck it out for a bit, but after forty-five minutes it was getting too much for her; I could see she was uncomfortable, and I switched it off.

“I’m sorry, Sarah, I just don’t get it.” She paused. “Although, I will say, the costumes are beautiful.”

“Hell yes. Del Toro has fantastic visuals. Hey, you know, if you like those...”

As I fired up the laptop and started to search for images, I kicked myself for not thinking of it earlier. Anjali might not care for the music or the blood or the doomed romances, but the wardrobe was something she could appreciate. That evening, side by side on my sofa, we fell down a rabbit hole of High Gothic finery.

I would have been content to glance at each of the outfits, admire it, and move on to the next, but Anjali was no amateur. Whenever we saw something that caught her eye or mine, she’d stay there, staring at the photo until she’d figured out exactly how it was constructed. We spent three or four hours that way, immersed in lace and leather and satin and a lot of black lipstick, and then Anjali asked the obvious question.

“Do you dress up like that?”

“Oh, I used to. Haven’t done since I got back from Germany. I was busy with work, and I can’t stay up till two a.m. the way I used to, so I sort of drifted out of it. I was sort of thinking about it, though... the Sisters of Mercy are touring in a couple of months, and I’d like to see them. I don’t know if they’ll be any good, probably not, but I want to be able to say I’ve seen them.”

“Then you should go!”

“I know, just...” I scowled. “I hate going to social things when I don’t know anybody who’s going to be there. I never really met the Sydney goth crowd. I feel uncomfortable going to stuff like that on my own.”

Anjali stroked my hand. “There is an obvious solution to that, Sarah.”

“I thought it wasn’t your thing?”

“It’s not, but I don’t hate it either. If you want to make that one of our date nights...” She squeezed.

“You’re the best!”

She did get cold feet a couple of weeks later, though not for the reasons you might expect.

“I don’t have the right clothes for this.”

“Anjali, you’ll be fine. Just wear whatever, nobody will care. Look.” I pulled up some concert photos. “See, not everybody’s going high gothic. Lots of people just wearing jeans and T-shirts.” I zoomed in. “That one’s in a Bon Jovi shirt. Nobody minds.”

“Sarah, look at that photo again. What do you _not_ see?”

I looked, but couldn’t figure it out. “I give. What?”

“Every single person in that photo is white.”

“Not every one,” I protested. “Dave there at the edge of the stage is Vietnamese... okay, I agree, it is _mostly_ white.”

“Yes. Do you know what happens when I’m the only desi in the room? People stare at me as if I’ve wandered into the wrong place by accident. I don’t like being stared at. If I’m going, then I want to look like somebody who belongs there.”

“Okay. Do I need to take you shopping? I’m sure we can find you something.”

Anjali shook her head. “I make my own, remember? But if you feel like subsidising my creative efforts, perhaps I might make a trip to my cousin’s shop for materials.”

“Absolutely.”

Later that week she called me. “Sarah, I have a few ideas, but I need to know my budget for this.”

I knew what goth wardrobing cost (too much, way too much), but it had been a long time since I’d bought the raw materials. “What do you think you’ll need?”

“About five to seven metres, depending on how fancy I get, plus notions.” Which didn’t answer my question. 

“Okay, um...” Seven metres... I tried to remember what I would have paid for fabrics back in the days when I still owned a sewing machine, then adjusted upwards to allow for inflation, and rounded up to allow for thread, fastenings, trim, buttons, and anything else that might be required. “Uh, will three hundred be enough?”

She just laughed. “Oh, Sarah! Much more than enough. Well, let me see go see what my cousin has.” A few days later she gave me the order number, and I rang her cousin and paid on my credit card.

For a little while I wondered what she had planned, but that question slipped off my radar a couple of days later when our partners in Schiphol sent us through an urgent request for a “small change” that meant two weeks of me working late. I barely noticed that Anjali was also uncharacteristically quiet and that her default status message had changed to “sewing”.

We met up at my place in the afternoon before the concert. Having caught the train over, Anjali showed up in mufti with a large garment bag slung over her shoulder. She looked a little surprised when I opened the door.

“Oh! You look nice, Sarah!”

“Thanks! I thought it was about time I wore some of this stuff.” After several hours vacillating about what to wear—ignoring my own ‘wear anything’ advice—I’d gone for a traditional gothic look: black corset over a lace-trimmed white blouse, snug but not tight; a knee-length skirt in midnight blue; and what I called my ‘doctor boots’. They were serious boots: thigh-high black leather, gleaming stainless-steel fittings, rakishly pointed toes.

“Later on I’ll get you to help lace me up.” I tapped at the corset, and then at the top of one boot. “I can do it on my own, but it’s much easier with help.”

“Of course. Sarah, where on earth _did_ you get those boots?”

“Off a website. Filled in my measurements, chose what options I wanted, sent them my money. Bit of an indulgence, it was a reward to myself for completing my doctorate. But there was a delay, the guy who makes them got sick, and they didn’t show up until after I left for Germany. Then Edgar and I broke up and he packed up my stuff before I got back. They were in a packing box for a couple of years, so this’ll be the first time I’ve worn them out anywhere. They were a bit dusty though, I gave them a good clean.”

“Well, they’re lovely.”

The conversation drifted onto her work. Things were going smoothly for once, she’d just had a paper accepted for a conference coming up, something about a software model she’d written to simulate magnetic quakes in neutron stars. After a while, I changed the topic again.

“By the way, I think you’re missing something?”

“Am I?” She thought for a moment. “Oh!” She pulled the scarf out of her handbag and tied it around her throat. “Better?”

“Much.” I leant forwards and touched her under the chin, lifting my finger to tilt her face upwards, and suddenly the temperature in the room changed. “I do enjoy your visits, Miss Lily.”

“Me too.” Her voice was lower now.

“Now, how about you help me with that lacing?”

Corsets get a bad rap. Yes, done badly they can be instruments of torture—and sometimes that’s the point. But I’ll take a well-fitted corset over an underwire bra any day of the week: all-round support and evenly-distributed pressure, like a firm hug.

With Lily behind me, pulling on the laces, I felt like a knight armouring for battle with the assistance of her loyal squire. Certainly there was enough steel hidden inside there.

“How’s that?” she asked.

“Just right. Now, if you tie that off in a bow, then I can get out if I need to.” She obliged, and then I turned to face her. “How am I?”

“Your neckline needs straightening.” She tugged at one spot where the lace had been caught under the corset. “That’s better.”

I rolled my shoulders, letting myself settle into my breastplate, and smiled at her. “Now the boots.”

I sat myself down at the edge of my sofa, legs stretched out in front of me, and Lily sat cross-legged at my feet. Starting at my left foot, she began working the laces through, taking up the slack and tightening them one row at a time.

When she was halfway up my calf I said, “Here, let me make that easier for you,” and I placed my foot in her lap. As she continued upwards I began to press, rhythmically, against the top of her thigh through her slacks.

“That’s not actually making it easier,” she said.

“Isn’t it?” I didn’t stop.

The further up she got, the slower it went, because there was more lace to pull through at each step. Moving up my leg, she had to lean further forwards – she couldn’t just shuffle closer, not with my foot on her – and as she did so, my toe gradually slid down between her knees, the edge of my sole grazing the inside of her thigh.

She squirmed, but didn’t pull away. If anything, I thought she pressed back a little. “Saraaah...”

“Yes, Lily?”

“Nothing...”

She’d laced past the top of my knee now, and when she leaned forwards a little more, I reached out and stroked her hair, twisted my fingers through it, pulled her in towards me so she was at the limit of balance. My heel was on the floor now, in the space between her legs, and the toe of my boot was nudging at her crotch.

Slowly, slowly, I lifted, pressing up against her. She sighed, and rocked a little, and gripped my knee to steady herself.

“You have a job to do, Lily.” I tugged her hair softly. “Don’t get distracted.”

“No, ma’am.”

I lifted my toe further, digging my heel into the carpet, and she shifted, rising up on her knees. Both my hands were in her hair now, nudging her face close to my thigh, close enough to smell the leather as she laced the last few rows.

I began to rock my foot, pressing against her, the wedge-shaped toe coaxing her legs further apart. She was well and truly off-balance now, dependent on my grip on her hair to keep her from toppling forwards, gasping as I worked my toe against her softness.

“Polish it,” I said, and she muttered something I didn’t catch. “What was that?”

“Nothing, ma’am.” Lily wobbled, doing her best to stay upright as she tied off the ends of my bootlace, completing the knot but almost falling. She reached towards me imploringly and I caught her hand in mine, fingers between fingers, and we made two interlocking fists while she pressed herself against my boot, grinding against its hard smoothness.

Little circles, polishing to a shine, and I could scent her involuntary arousal as she worked her hips against me, hear it in her breathing, feel it in the tightening of her fingers against mine.

I stopped, and dropped my toe. “Kiss it.”

“Wh-what?” Her face was flushed, and I could hear the frustration in her voice as she started to come down again, just short of the peak I’d been pushing for.

“Kiss my toe, girl.” _Feel the emptiness at your crotch. Ache for me to fill it again._

She crawled backwards and bent, and pressed her lips to my toe, and I understood something of why people do terrible things to one another.

“Whose are you, Lily?”

“I’m yours, ma’am.”

“Good girl. And now the other.”

She nodded, and kissed my right foot, and then began the lacing on that side. This time I took a different tack; I let my foot rest between her legs, brushing her thighs, but kept the pressure tantalisingly light. Eventually she began to press herself against me once more, without being instructed, and I tutted.

“Not yet, my dear. You still have work to do.”

Lily worked her way upwards, and every so often she would look at me questioningly, and still I did nothing more than tease her with the occasional ‘accidental’ nudge. When she reached the top and tied off the ends in a neat bow I stroked her hair. “Good girl. But you’re not finished yet.”

“Ma’am?”

I pulled her closer, and touched my toe against her. “Well, _I’m_ not finished, so _you’re_ not finished.”

“Ma’am?”

“You have a pretty little tongue, and delicate fingers, and it’s time for you to make good use of them.”

“Oh!”

There was a moment’s pause, as I lifted my hips and hooked my thumbs under the waistband of my panties, and between the two of us we managed to manoeuvre them down over my boots. Then I lay back, and she leant forwards, brushing my thighs with her lips and fingers, sliding under my skirt. As her fingers entered me, I raised my toe, and she sighed at the pressure of my foot against her once more.

Normally when I’m getting that kind of attention from a girl, I like to wrap my legs around her. But with those boots laced up, bending at the knees becomes a difficult proposition. So I lay back, doing my best impression of the letter “Y”, and dug my fingernails into the back of her neck. Her tongue wriggled against me, almost the same shape as my boot-toe but infinitely softer and warmer, and I sighed.

“That’s the way. Now don’t forget to polish me.” And she began once more to grind against my toe, thighs squeezing my foot tightly, as her finger slipped into me and her tongue traced little electric lines up towards my clit where her thumb was stroking, rolling me from side to side.

“Lily yes.” I could feel her body tensing against me, her tongue flickering sweetly. Her hair was getting in the way, and I wiped it out of her face with one hand. The other had slipped down from her neck, under her top, and I was scoring lines in her back. We rubbed insistently against one another, joined at tongue and cunt and cunt and toe. “Yes yes. Don’t stop.”

She stroked, and twisted two fingers inside me, and then I made some kind of desperate noise as the long-building wave crashed over me. My foot came up hard enough to lift her knees off the floor, and I held her wriggling on me as the feeling rippled through my body.

She groaned and I felt her release follow mine, and then slowly I brought her back down to the floor. She was still licking me, but I had crossed over into hypersensitivity, and the stimulation was too much to bear. “Enough, darling. Enough.”

I pulled her up so we were face to face, and kissed her deeply, tasting the mix of us. She was a mess, hair dishevelled, face smeared, and to me she felt... not quite all there.

“Anjali?”

“Mmm?”

“All okay?”

“I think so.” She squeezed me. “Just processing.”

I stroked her hair. “I think you’re going to want a shower before we go out.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

* * * * *

While she was in the shower I cleaned myself up, changed into my contacts, and then started on my makeup. I kept it subtle. There had been a time when I considered it _de rigueur_ to do the full white makeup/Eye of Horus business for a night out, but I was feeling suddenly self-conscious again, nervous that Anjali might think me weird, perhaps the aftermath of our recent little scene.

Besides, if we’re being honest, I’m pale enough that I don’t really need the white makeup. So I restricted myself to a little eye shadow – for goth values of “a little” – and a dark blue lipstick to match my skirt.

Somewhere along the way, Anjali stepped out of the shower and went off to dress. I was just finishing up when I heard her coming back.

“Hey there,” I said, turning to the doorway, “how does my – oh, _fuck me._ ”

That was the moment when I saw what she was wearing. The tailoring was superb, but it was the colours that first caught my eye.

Her dress was ivory, a lightly textured brocade that complemented her skin... or at least, it started as ivory, at her shoulders and chest. But below that she’d cut slits in the brocade, and sewn in inserts of bright blood-red silk to fill the gaps.

The first ones were no longer than her thumb, no wider than a knife-blade’s thickness. But down her body they grew longer, wider, and somewhere around her waist the red slashes spilled out far enough to meet one another and merge. The crimson-streaked ivory dress became an ivory-patched crimson dress, one pattern evolving into another, until just above her knees the last of the white was lost. Below that, the crimson in turn gave way to a deep maroon creeping out from deep in the pleats of her skirt, and by the hem only the dark colour remained. Down her arms, she’d executed the same effect in miniature.

All in all, it looked like the fruit of a collaboration between M.C. Escher and Lady Macbeth.

“Will this do?” she asked demurely.

“Will it _do_?” I rolled my eyes. “Don’t pretend you don’t know. Bloody hell, Anjali. And I thought you said goth wasn’t your thing.”

“I _also_ said I liked the outfits.”

“Yeah. Apparently so.”

She did her makeup—nothing fancy, it didn’t need to be with that dress—and tied her scarf back on, and then it was time for us to go.

In the taxi, I asked Anjali about her tailoring. I didn’t really have the technical knowledge to follow most of what she said, but I had enough to see she’d pulled out the stops for this one, and I knew she’d enjoy talking about it.

“The way these pieces fit together. That looks really complex and precise.”

“It was a bit.” I suspected she’d have said the same if she’d built the Space Shuttle single-handed. “I sketched it out, but then I adapted my modelling software to make sure I got the measurements right. I only finished it last night.”

“Wait. You wrote a program to model neutron stars and then you used it to... design a dress?”

“I just needed something that does meshing to represent a curved surface, and it does that.” She frowned. “Though I had to make a couple of changes. Obviously I don’t warp space-time enough to need a relativistic correction.”

“You’re amazing, you know that?” I squeezed her hand, and then she was off again talking about the technique she’d used for the pleating, and I nodded and smiled until we got to the venue.

The concert... well, it wasn’t _good_ , but it was memorable.

Smoke machines are pretty much mandatory at a goth concert, but I maintain that running four at once, in a fairly small venue, is overkill. I’m still not sure if I can claim that I’ve seen the Sisters of Mercy live, because the smoke was so thick that they were barely more than shadows in the haze.

As for the music, well, I could recognise all the songs? Let’s be kind and leave it there. But I didn’t regret going. Teenage goth Sarah would never have forgiven her future self if I’d passed up our one and only chance to catch the Sisters, even with only one person left from the original lineup.

If the performance itself was a disappointment, the audience was not. Within a couple of minutes of our arrival I had ticked off everything on the Peter Steele memorial checklist: sweaty Velcro, latex, fur, and feathers. I was glad I’d made the effort to dress up. There were some fantastic outfits on display, so many that I suspected I wasn’t the only one who’d come out of goth retirement for this show.

It’s not often that I’m comfortable in the middle of a crowd, but I was comfortable in this one. Even if I didn’t know them personally, I was among my people, bonding on a wave of nostalgia.

I found the nerve to dance with Anjali. I’m not a great dancer, too self-conscious about the way I move, but goth dancing is undemanding. You don’t have to move your feet at all, just stand in one spot and sway. Anjali swayed with me, and dozens of goths swayed with us, like a kelp forest in a storm. I even got daring enough to get into more advanced moves like “casting spells at the ceiling, casting spells at the floor” _._

For her part, Anjali seemed to be having fun; it didn’t hurt that half a dozen people had stopped to compliment her on her dress and ask where she got it.

All the same, it was perhaps a kindness that it was not a long concert. It was barely eleven when the second encore wrapped up with “Vision Thing” and the lights came up. In no particular rush, we propped ourselves against the back wall and waited for the crowd to thin before we made our exit.

“Hi Sarah!”

Caught unawares, I turned. It took a moment for me to remember the face: an old friend, more Edgar’s than mine.

“Hi Thomas! What are you doing down this end of the world?”

“Moved to Melbourne two years ago.” He was not alone; a group of four others was with him, waiting on our conversation. “You?”

“Same.”

The woman beside him looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her, and she must have sensed it. “I think we met a few years back? I’m Heather.” She pointed to their friends. “Lucy, Imogen, Alex, this is Sarah.”

I nodded, and turned to indicate my companion, and said “Anjali,” at the same moment that she said “Lily”. That threw me for a moment, but nobody else seemed to have noticed.

“Love your dress, Anjali,” said Heather, and the others nodded agreement.

“Hey,” said Thomas, “we were going to get a bite to eat, do you want to come along?”

So we ended up eating pancakes at a late-night restaurant nearby. We got some odd looks from the other patrons, but there were enough of us that I wasn’t bothered by it. I told them how I knew Anjali, leaving out the circumstances of our current arrangement, and we chatted about mutual friends and shook our heads about the show we’d just seen.

“Still,” I said, “it’s been way too long since I’ve been out to something like this. I really should go more often.”

Alex replied (or maybe it was Imogen): “There’s a goth night at Paladin, second Friday each month. You should come!”

Then Heather turned to Anjali. “So, tonight aside, are you a Sisters fan?”

She chuckled and shook her head. “It’s not really my kind of music. But Sarah didn’t have anybody to go with. I still had a good time.”

I was hoping nobody would ask awkward questions, and they almost didn’t, but just as I was about to change the topic Imogen-or-Alex interrupted. “Wait, you made _that_ just to keep your friend company?”

She shrugged. “I like sewing.”

“Well, if you ever need another job, you could probably get a few commissions for work like that.”

Anjali grinned. “That’s very kind. But I have a PhD and a job on the side. For now I think I want to keep sewing as just a hobby.”

I was confused for a moment—Anjali had a side job? She hadn’t mentioned it—and the conversation had moved on to other topics before I realised that she meant me.

Soon after, she yawned. “Excuse me. I probably should get home soon. Sarah, if you want to stay—”

“Nah, I’ll come with you.” Suddenly I felt drained myself. We said our goodbyes, left something for the bill, and stepped outside for a taxi.

“You okay, Anjali? Not like you to fade this early. I’m the old one.”

“Oh, I’m all right. Just up a little bit late finishing this.” She plucked at the dress.

“When you say a _little bit_ late... what time did you get to bed?”

“Um, it’s possible that I didn’t?”

“Ah. Right. That would explain it.” I hugged her, and then our cab pulled up.

I was still feeling out of sorts, and it took me a little while to trace the feeling back to its source: insecurity, neediness. I leant over and whispered.

“Anjali? When you said it was a job—”

But she’d fallen asleep, leaving me with only my thoughts for company. It was quite true, it _was_ a job, and she’d said it with no malice. Still, it had caught me unawares, and I didn’t like how I felt about it.

I stewed on it for most of the way home, and it was only as we pulled in to my building that I thought of another side to it. True I’d paid for her company, and for her materials, but it wasn’t on my dollar that she’d spent weeks working on that dress and pulled an all-nighter to finish it. Nor did I believe that it was solely for the sake of fitting in; she could have made something perfectly adequate for that in a few hours.

No, she’d gone above and beyond... for what? At least partly, I thought, for me.

Having paid the taxi, I woke her gently, and she murmured. “Are we there?”

“We are. Time to get out.” I helped her to her feet. “Come on in. Time for bed.”

It wasn’t quite, though. I needed her help to take my boots off, and we were so tired that we both fell over backwards, in opposite directions, when the second came off. And then we had to get our makeup off, and I had to do my contacts.

When we finally made it into bed – me with my arm around her, a little possessively – she yawned and said, “Sarah, do you know what sort of birds always stick together?”

“No?”

“Velcrows. Good night, Sarah.”


	6. La Belle Dame Sans Merci

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anjali plays hard to get.

After our concert date I didn’t see Anjali again for almost two months. She was preparing for a conference in Italy, and I had a birthday party to organise.

I’ve never really thought of John as my stepfather. To me, he was “Mum’s boyfriend”, and then later “Mum’s husband” and “Cassie’s dad”, never _my_ anything. That wasn’t his fault. He’s a good bloke, very normal in all the ways that I’m not, and when I look back I can see he was doing his best to be a good stepfather to me. But the timing wasn’t on his side.

Nobody had asked me whether Mum and Dad should get a divorce, nobody had asked me whether we should move for Mum’s new job, nobody had asked me whether I wanted to change schools and leave my old friends behind. John came into the picture as one more change foisted on me without asking.

Another teenager might have acted out: tantrums, shoplifting, or perhaps taking up smoking. Me, I was the sort of goody-goody who could barely bring herself to whisper “shit” when I stubbed a toe, never mind more drastic measures. What I did was more civilised, and in its way crueller.

I was impeccably courteous to John. I said hello and goodbye, please and thank-you, I did all my chores. I gave him no cause at all for complain. But whenever he tried to do something fatherly, offering me help with my homework or a lift to Physics Club, I would, very politely, turn him down.

Memory is unreliable, but I don’t _think_ I was trying to be hurtful. I was dealing with bullies at school and trying to figure out whether Cassie’s inexplicable friendliness was some sort of trap, while struggling through the complications of queer puberty. My relationship with Mum was changing as I tried to come to terms with the idea that I wasn’t the only priority in her world, and I was missing Dad, who was somewhere in Idaho with his new girlfriend. I’m not good at multi-tasking, and as best I can interpret it now, I just didn’t have room for John in my emotional world.

It didn’t help that we had so little by way of shared interests. When John wasn’t running his hardware shop, he liked to spend his time at the football or trekking in the great outdoors. Me, I was a bookworm who believed our ancestors had invented roofs and electricity and the internet for a reason.

It can’t have been easy for him banging his head against my wall, and eventually he must have got the message. He backed off on the overtures and we settled into a cautious, distant sort of interaction, more like housemates than family. Things improved a little after Cassie and I became friends, but by that stage John and I had set the pattern for our relationship. Once the rut is worn, it’s hard to break out of it.

Then the unthinkable happened, and suddenly John and I had all too much in common. Losing Cassie tore a huge hole in my heart. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him to bury his daughter only a few years after her mother.

After that, I made a conscious effort to be kind to him. I didn’t have the conversational tools to talk to him about Cassie, much less my own grief, but I made a rule of saying yes to family stuff whenever I could. I’d sit and watch the footy with him, helping him cheer on the Swans, trying to work out the rules of the game. I’d go on family outings with him and Mum even when it meant getting wet and mosquito-bitten. These are the sacrifices we make.

I always feel Cassie’s absence on holidays and anniversaries, so I assume John does too, and I make an extra effort to be there for those. That’s why I put my hand up to help Mum organise his sixtieth celebration. I called around venues, I arranged a group outing with his friends to watch the Swans squeeze in a narrow win against the Bulldogs, and I booked a karaoke dinner afterwards, because John loves karaoke.

He was duly grateful, and I was glad to have helped him enjoy himself. But in hindsight, it should have been obvious that I was setting myself up for a small meltdown. Phoning strangers, trying to guess what other people might like, going to a footy game surrounded by noisy fans, and boisterous drunk people singing: any one of those is guaranteed to drain my batteries. Packing them all into a single event was asking for trouble, even before the inevitable “wish Cassie was here” thoughts.

I’m used to being surrounded by neurotypical people, and normally I can deal with it. But when my defences are low, sometimes it catches me unawares and I feel myself lost and lonely and far from home. When the party had wrapped up and everybody was gone, I was still wide awake and fretful at three in the morning.

In hindsight, I can see how it happened. But the more stressed I am, the worse I am at figuring out _why_ it happened. As I tried to work out the cause of my malaise, my brain attempted to help by dredging up a long list of Stressful Things To Fret About, playing on endless loop inside my head. Of all the things I could have picked, the most obvious one was something from two months ago that I hadn't quite let go of, the thing Anjali had said after the concert.

“A job on the side” was how she’d described our arrangement. Was that really all I was to her?

The advice I would’ve given anybody else was “sleep on it and see how you feel in the morning,” and it’s good advice, but I was in no place to take it. I was unhappy, and I ascribed my unhappiness to that issue, and through sheer force of will I managed to turn a molehill into a mountain. I spent the wee hours of the morning drafting an email of a few paragraphs, unsure whether my words were communicating my anxieties, unsure whether I was being unreasonable.

It was almost five AM, and I still wasn’t happy with the wording, when I noticed Anjali’s IM light come on—of course, she was in Florence, it would be evening for her. Messaging her might not have been a good idea, not in my state of mind, but I was lonely and needy and couldn’t help myself.

_PrincessOfParallelograms: heya, how goes the conference?_

_NeutroniumGirl: Hey Sarah! It’s going very well, I think they really liked my talk. How are you?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: um... not great._

_NeutroniumGirl: Oh no, what’s wrong? Trouble with the party?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: No, the party went fine. Just fretting about other stuff._

_NeutroniumGirl: Do you want to talk about it?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: You remember when we were talking to Thomas and Heather after the Sisters concert, and you said you had a job on the side. Did you mean us?_

_NeutroniumGirl: Yes?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: Is that how you think about me?_

There was a long silence. I could see she was typing, pausing, typing, but no text came through for almost fifteen minutes. Then at last:

_NeutroniumGirl: Sarah, this is hard to answer right now. I need to think about this and right now I’m really busy with this conference. Is it all right if we talk about it after I get back?_

_PrincessOfParallelograms: sure._

Of course, it wasn’t all right. Even as I said it, I knew I was going to spend the next week trying to guess what Anjali was going to say, and fretting over things that hadn’t even happened. But I couldn’t very well say _no, I demand to talk about it right now._ I just had to stifle my impatience and pretend to be an adult until time did its thing and we finally had a chance to discuss matters in my lounge room, over the wreckage of a gourmet pizza.

“So,” I said, feeling the anxiety gnawing in my belly, “…that stuff we were talking about...”

“Yes. About me calling this a job?”

I nodded.

“Well, it is, isn’t it? You’re paying me to do,” she waved her hands, “certain things.”

“I know, it’s just… is that all we are? Do you just think about me as your employer?”

“Wait, as—no, of course not! You’re my friend, Sarah. You’re a good friend. I didn’t think I needed to say that.”

“Oh. Oh, I’m glad to hear that. Thank you.”

But now she was looking at me oddly. “Why on earth would you think I didn’t care about you?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just, oh, it’s complicated. Stupid insecurity. Sometimes it feels like it doesn’t count if I’m paying for it. I need to know that I matter.” I remember I had my arms folded tight around myself, and I must have sounded whiny. I felt whiny.

“You paid for this dinner, didn’t you? Does that mean you’re not allowed to enjoy it?”

“No, but... I don’t think of you as takeaway pizza, Anjali. Lily. Whatever.”

“I hope not! I don’t want you keeping slices of me in the fridge. You’re paying me for a service, Sarah, one that I’m happy to provide. You’re not buying me.” She looked me over. “Although... I do believe you rather like the _fantasy_ of owning me.”

“Maybe,” I mumbled.

“Only ‘maybe’?” She came around to where I was slouched on the sofa, and sat by my side. “You don’t know whether you like the idea of being able to claim ownership of a good, obedient girl who knows she has to do whatever you tell her to do?”

“Anjali...”

“That’s ‘Lily’ to you.” She adjusted the scarf, revealing a little of the skin of her throat. “Of course, if you _did_ own me, you could choose whatever name you wanted for me. ‘Miss Kapadia’. ‘Lily’. ‘Good girl’. Anything you like, I’d have to answer to it.”

I was still trying to sulk, but she wasn’t making it easy. “Anjali, this is very distracting.”

“Or perhaps you would like it better if I _wasn’t_ so compliant? Perhaps you’d have to take control of me and teach me my place?”

“If you don’t stop that, I’ll—”

“It wouldn’t be easy. You know how stubborn I can get when I put my mind to it. I wonder what you’d have to do to persuade me. If you think you can.”

Somewhere deep inside, I felt my gears shifting. “Lily, are you testing me?”

She leant forwards, whispering. “I bet you can’t.”

“I can,” I growled, “and I _will_.” I grabbed at her, but she dodged away, and my fingers only brushed her arm. By the time I got to my feet she’d scampered away to the opposite side of my dining table. I edged left, and she sidestepped to my right; I made a sudden jump to the right, and she dashed left again, keeping the table in between us.

We went back and forth like that for some time, and I could see I wasn’t going to win this game in a hurry. Anjali was lighter on her feet than me, and probably fitter given that her bicycle was her main mode of transport. If I wanted to wipe the smirk off her face, I needed to change the game.

So I chased her around the table some more until she was in the corner of the room, and then I grabbed the rim of the table and shoved. It slid across the floor with a loud squeak, and I kept pushing until it was pressed firmly against the wall, boxing Anjali in on three sides.

“Cheat!” she said, backing into the cul-de-sac I’d made for her.

“I make the rules.” I advanced, waggling my fingers. I knew she was going to make a break for it, and I was worried she might try going over the table; if she did I’d have to let her get away with it, because there was too much risk of her taking a bad fall if I tried to tackle her.

But she went the other way, dropping to her hands and knees and trying to scramble out under the table. She almost got away with it, but I just managed to catch hold of one ankle. Then I reeled her in; she kicked at my hands, but I got hold of her other ankle, and soon enough I was sitting on her back as she lay face-down on the floor.

“Got you, Lily.”

“That’s not my name! I’m Anjali!”

“You’ll answer to whatever I choose to call you.” I took a generous fistful of her hair and yanked it.

“Ow!”

“Now I’m going to take you upstairs for the discipline you obviously need.”

“You beast! I’ll never succumb!”

“Never, you say? We’ll see about that.” I picked myself up and dragged her up the stairs by her hair, holding her head low so she couldn’t stand up. Instead she had to scramble after me on all fours, hurling imprecations in Hindi. I didn’t know the words, but I got the general idea. When I had her at the foot of my bed, still on hands and knees, I yanked her forwards and off balance: face down, bum in the air.

I still had her hair in my fist; now I separated it into two handfuls, splayed them out to either side, and knelt on them, so that she couldn’t move her head in any direction without pulling on it painfully.

“Oh! You beast!” She tried to slap at me, but it was an awkward angle for her and she ended up just flailing ineffectually.

I stroked her cheek. “Now, Lily, just let me know when you’ve learned your place and you’re ready to apologise for the trouble you’ve given.” Then I crouched over her and went for her ribs, tickling ferociously.

“Hahaha! Oh, you bitch! Ah! You’re evil, Sarah!”

“Language!” But I was secretly pleased to have driven her to swearing. I wasn't sure I'd ever heard her use that word before. “Ootchie cootchie coo...” I tugged her blouse loose of the waistband, and my fingers swirled over her skin.

“Ah! Oh!” She squirmed, but every time she tried to wriggle her body around to one side or the other, I dug my fingers into her ribs and provided the necessary correction.

I tickled and tickled, and she squealed and called me names, but showed no signs of giving in. “You forget,” she gasped, “I have a little brother. I can—ah!— I can take this all day long.”

“Very well, in that case I suppose we’ll have to try something else.” I reached back behind me, to where my dressing gown lay at the edge of the bed, and pulled the cord free.

It took me a couple of tries to remember how to tie a Texas Handcuff knot—thankfully Anjali’s predicament stopped her from seeing my failures, it wouldn’t have helped the image I was trying to project—and then I slipped it over her wrists and tied it off. “Let’s make sure you don’t do anything foolish.”

I pulled her onto the bed, tugging her up to the headboard, then rolled her onto her back and sat astride her as she glared up at me. Her face was more than a little flushed from our mutual struggles.

“Now, Lily, you wouldn’t have a bit of string handy, would you?” I cast my gaze down to where her bosom was heaving indignantly in a most enticing fashion. She was still wearing her scarf, but below that she had on a blouse that laced at the front. I relieved her of the lace and used it to tie her hair fast to my bedframe, wrapping its several times to make sure she couldn’t pull through the knot. “That should keep you out of trouble for a little, while we talk.”

“You’re nothing but a scoundrel and I’ll never—mmph!” I had clamped my hand over her mouth.

“Very well then, _I’ll_ talk. It’ll do you good to listen.” I lay down beside her and wrangled her onto her side, so she was facing away from me. “Let me tell you a bedtime story.”

“Mmph.”

“Once upon a time, there was a fairy named Lilabel, daughter of the Dandelion King. She had beautiful long hair”—I stroked Anjali’s head—“and her skin glittered in the sun like a dragonfly’s wings. Lilabel was a good and kind fairy, and every day she and her sisters went into the forest to paint spots on the toadstools so people would know which ones were dangerous to eat. And then as the sun set, they would hurry home to their father’s palace.”

From the shift in her body I knew I’d caught her attention, and when I moved my hand from her mouth she kept silent. I lifted myself so that my lips were against her ear, and I whispered. “But the forest was home to another fairy. Lady Tanglespine made her palace in a great gloomy tangle of blackberry bushes with thorns like claws. And one evening, as Tanglespine rose from her sleep and looked out at the world, she saw Lilabel and her sisters hurrying home from their work. She saw Lilabel’s beauty, and she _wanted_ her.”

I paused to kiss the back of Anjali’s neck, and she tensed.

“For days she watched the sisters, studying Lilabel’s ways and coveting her beauty. The more she watched the more she wanted Lilabel for her own, and she was the sort to take what she wanted. But she couldn’t just pop her in a sack and carry her away, as much as she might have wanted to. There are rules in Fairyland, even for the likes of Tanglespine.”

I stroked Anjali’s throat, and caught the corner of her scarf between my fingers, and pulled it slowly free, and as I talked I retied it in her hair like a ribbon.

“One fine morning, Lilabel was sitting on a tree-stump, putting the final touches on a beautiful fly agaric and looking forwards to her sandwiches, when she heard a noise behind her and turned just in time to see a dog-fox making off with her lunch. She grumbled at the beast, but told herself ‘well, I daresay he needed it more than I did,’ and went on with her work. 

“But as the day lengthened, she began to feel her stomach growling. She was working by the river, and down by the riverside grew thick thorny vines laden with juicy berries, big and fat, so ripe that they oozed sweet juice at the slightest touch. The sight of them made her mouth water, and although her father had told her not to, she couldn’t resist. She plucked a handful, and ate them, and they were more delicious even than they looked, so then she took another, and another, and then behind her she heard a voice.

“‘What have we here? A thief, stealing from my vines?’ And there stood Lady Tanglespine, smiling with teeth that glittered like razors. And there was Lilabel, face and fingers purple and sticky with blackberry juice.

“‘I’m so sorry, ma’am, I didn’t know they were yours,’ stammered Lilabel. ‘I will pay you for them. My father has gold and—’

“‘Ah, no, my dear,’ replied Lady Tanglespine. ‘For eating my berries, it’s for me to set the price, and it’s not gold I want.’

“‘Then what?’ asked Lilabel. ‘Whatever the cost, my father will pay it.’

“Lady Tanglespine smiled a cruel smile and approached, stretching out a cord of the strongest spider-silk. ‘Hold out your hands...’

“At that, Lilabel panicked. She turned to flee, but as she ran her skirt caught on the thorns, and she was stuck fast. Then the dark fairy was on her, and before she knew it her hands were tied behind her back.” 

I tugged on the knot that held Anjali’s wrists. 

“‘By the law of our kind,’ said Tanglespine, ‘you are mine for seven years, to serve me in everything that I command, until you have paid for your thefts.’ Then she twisted that beautiful long hair into a rope and led her away, through a maze of bramble-bushes that scratched at poor Lilabel with every step she took.”

I ran my fingernails over her face, her arms, her thighs. I felt Anjali quivering under my hands, and I felt myself suddenly drunk, but not on wine.

“The thorns lashed at her, snagged on her dress, ripped and _stripped_.”

I plucked at her clothes, grabbing at buttons, yanking, pulling, as roughly as I could without actually damaging them. Her blouse, open, pushed back to her shoulders. Her skirt, tugged down over her kicking feet, discarded at the foot of the bed. Her bra, pulled askew, one breast exposed to view. Her panties, rolled halfway down her hips, so they became a hobble instead of a shield.

“Oh, please, miss,” Anjali murmured.

“Before long, poor Lilabel was all but naked, and still the thorns clawed at her.” I ran my fingernails down her ribs and she gasped, twisted as far as her ties allowed. Then I began to scratch at her, raking angry lines in her flesh, sudden sharp strikes all over, wherever she left herself exposed.

“Oh! Ow! Ah!” cried Anjali, and there was pain in her voice, but that wasn’t all there was. “Please, milady—AH!” For I had caught her breast in my clawed hand, fingers closing on her nipple, pinching between hard nails. “Please, milady!”

“Why, girl, whatever is all that noise about?” I squeezed a little harder, relaxed, squeezed, watching her screw up her face with each twinge.

“Please, milady, I’m stuck in the thorns.”

“How very careless of you. Well, I suppose I must rescue you.” I let go of her breast—pausing to admire the white crescent nail-marks I’d left in her skin—and began to stroke her, soothing the hurts I’d given her. “Is that better, girl?”

“Yes, thank you, mistress.”

I stooped again, and gave her nipple a slow squeeze as my tongue flickered at her earlobe, and I whispered. “Later I’ll have you pierced, so all the world can see whose you are. You’ll look perfect with silver rings through you.” I punctuated my words with a tighter squeeze, and she shuddered violently, a whole-body paroxysm. Her face was scrunched up, unreadable to me, and I whispered again: “Are you okay?”

Anjali nodded, squeezed out a moment’s smile for me. “I’m okay. Don’t stop...” Then her voice shifted. “Please, Lady Tanglespine, don’t, have mercy...”

“I’m a kind mistress, girl, to those who know their place. Do you know yours?”

“Yes, mistress. I’m your servant-girl. I’ll do whatever you wish. I’ll be good. Please don’t pierce me.”

“Mmm?” I unclipped her bra, ran my fingers over her skin, circling her breasts, brushing the nipples. “What if my wish is to pierce you?” My other hand dipped down between her legs, teasing, testing. “What if hurting you is delicious to me?” And I scraped at her nub with my nail, just enough to make her wriggle.

She sighed, eyes closing. I saw her gulp a breath. “Then you’ll hurt me, mistress. Because you can. You’ll do what you want.”

“Mmm.” My fingers slipped inside her, and she arched and gasped, and her arms strained against my knots. “I think I want to make you cry. Is that wrong?”

“No, mistress. I’m your prisoner, in your palace in the thorns. You have the right. Nothing is wrong for you here.”

So I did. I assailed her with fingers and nails and teeth, until she came sobbing in my arms, and I caught her tears on the tip of my tongue. Until she went limp in my arms, and started to shiver, and I loosed her bindings and wrapped my quilt tight around her.

“Are you okay, Anjali?” I stroked her hair.

“I... I think so?” 

I held her, and not only for her sake; I had processing of my own to do. A few minutes ago I'd been high on ego, confident and cruel, but now the rush was gone and self-doubt was creeping in to take its place, the butterfly crawling back into its chrysalis.

There were bite marks on her breasts and thighs, red welts on her back, here and there smears of blood where my nails had broken her skin. All within the terms of our agreement and the checklist we’d talked through together. And yet, as the heat of lust cooled, I found myself uncomfortable with the evidence of my violence. I sat there holding her, until perhaps fifteen minutes later she spoke.

“Well, that was different.”

“I’m sorry, I should have—”

“I didn’t say it was bad. Just... intense. I don’t think I can do that every week, Sarah.” She wriggled around to squeeze my arm. She was still shivering, just a little. “But it was interesting. We can talk about it in the morning.”

I nodded. “Get you anything?”

“No thank—actually, could I have a glass of water?”

“Sure.” I went and got her one, luke-warm so as not to chill her, and then we spooned under the quilt. I was almost asleep when she spoke again.

“Seven years for a handful of blackberries? Really?”

“Don’t blame me, I don’t make the law.”

“Uh huh.” She wriggled back against me. “Just so we’re clear on this, I’m absolutely _not_ getting a nipple piercing. Never ever. You know me and jewellery.”

“Understood. Anyway, if I _was_ getting you pierced, it’d be a tongue piercing.” 

“Really? Why is—oh. Does that make a difference, then?”

“It can be… rather nice,” I said, thinking back to my dalliance with Luisa.

“Well, I’m sorry I can’t help with that.”

“It’s okay. You have your own charms.”

“Mmm.”

By mutual consent we slept late the next morning. Even early-bird Anjali didn’t venture out of bed until ten, and I snoozed until she returned with a tray laden with breakfast.

“Omelettes? Thank you!”

“I felt like cooking. Budge over, I’m coming back in.”

As she settled in next to me, her robe slipped, and I could see the bruises beginning to blossom on her skin.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m fine. A little sore.” She tested one of the bruises with her fingertip, then shrugged. “Mostly just tired. What about you?”

“Okay, I guess. A bit confused.”

“About what?”

“Where it all comes from. Wanting to hurt you. It feels kind of messed up.”

“Am I more or less messed up than you for enjoying it?” She snuggled against me. “You know the joke about the man who thinks he’s a chicken? His friends think he should go see a psychiatrist, but his wife refuses to take him, because they need the eggs.”

“Wait, what?”

“Remember I went to medical school? These days, it’s all about what causes distress. If it’s making people happy and not hurting anybody, it’s not an illness just because it’s weird...”

And so we passed the morning—what was left of it—in philosophical debate about pleasure versus principle, on the implications of roleplaying cruelty and tyranny in a world that already had plenty of the real thing. Eventually we drifted into politics more generally, and I was surprised to discover the strength and depth of Anjali’s opinions on various matters.

I still had a tendency to think of her as a creature of my making, the pupil to my mentor. In some things, she still was, but the more we talked the more I saw that she’d been learning a lot for herself. We agreed on a lot, but the more we talked the more I found ideas and beliefs that weren’t mine, and somehow that made me feel better about the games I wanted to play with her.


	7. Annual Review

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah gets a promotion; she and Anjali review their arrangement.

“Hey Sarah?”

“Mmm-hmm?” We were cuddled up on my sofa together, idly fooling around while half-watching old episodes of Making Fiends on my TV.

“Next week it’s our one-year anniversary.”

“Already?” I thought about dates. “Huh. Yeah, I guess it is. Time flies.”

“We were going to do a review of things after a year.”

“We were. We could do it now, I guess… actually, I probably should prepare first. Next fortnight?”

Anjali nodded, and I wrapped my arms around her as I considered how to handle it.

I love advice columns. I have a bunch of go-to sites that arm me with social scripts for a wide variety of scenarios ranging from “asking your workmate to turn down their music” to “handling obnoxious relatives at family Christmas”. I’d drawn heavily on them when I was planning John’s birthday party.

But none of them were able to help me on this one. Searching on “how to conduct an annual review for your mistress” turned up nothing useful. Should I treat it formally, like a job interview? Casually, in my lounge room? Naked, in bed? I was out of my depth here.

* * * * *

“Hi Sarah.” I almost jumped. Martin, my boss, had come up behind my desk while I was absorbed in my code. “Can we talk this afternoon?”

“Sure, ah, what’s it about?”

“I’ll tell you when we meet.” And he walked off, leaving me to spend the next few hours wondering what I’d screwed up and how much trouble I was in.

None, as it turned out.

“Sarah, this isn’t public yet, but I’ve got permission to tell you. A couple of things.”

After some dithering, the first: “As you’ve probably guessed, we’re being acquired by P-K…”

I had not suspected any such thing, but then I’m usually oblivious to even the worst-kept secrets. I was familiar with Preussler-Kennedy GmbH. They’d contracted our services for the Schiphol logistics project, and evidently they liked our work enough to make it a more permanent arrangement. My default position on such things is “change is bad” but as Martin discussed it, it sounded like a reasonable arrangement: P-K would take over things like publicity, legal, and HR, leaving us to focus on the crunchy maths and programming work that we did best. All in all, it sounded like something I could live with.

The second: “…given my notice for the end of December. Prija has accepted a senior lecturer position at Chulakongkorn and I have some consulting work lined up with the railways there.”

“What? You’re…you’re leaving us?” Nobody ever accused me of being quick on the uptake.

“All good things must come to an end, eh? Prija’s parents are getting on, and we want the kids to spend more time with them while they’re still around.”

“Well. Uh, I hope it’s good for you! Do you know who’s going to replace you?”

Our company was named OwKeMa because at the start it had just been Owen, Kepler, and Martin. Nobody else had their experience; the rest of us had come in about five years later, as business grew too much for just the three of them to handle. I wondered if P-K would install one of their people.

“No decisions have been made yet, but if you wanted to put up your hand, I’d be happy to write a recommendation.”

“ _Me?_ ”

“Why not? You’re an excellent mathematician and your people skills have really come along, if the Schiphol trip is anything to go by.”

“But I…” I was about to say _I just got lucky with something I’d already prepared_ , but I remembered something Edgar had told me more than once, back when things were still good between us: _it’s not your job to advocate against yourself._ So I let it go. “Okay, sure, I’ll think about it.”

* * * * *

Anjali and I met up at the State Library for our review. I’d picked it because it was a nice quiet place and full of books, which fitted both our ideas of a good time. Picking my way past would-be novelists researching eighteenth-century etiquette and high-school students working on assignments, I spotted a flash of red and found my paramour sitting at a desk, nose deep in a book of botanical sketches. She was tapping one hand against the desk rhythmically, one of her occasional habits.

“Afternoon… Lily?”

“Oh! Good afternoon, Miriam.” It gave me a little kick. I didn’t use the pseudonym as often as she used hers, but hearing it like that felt like permission to take charge.

Lily-Anjali made a move to stand to meet me, but I shook my head and slid into the seat opposite her. “When I took you on, we agreed that we’d come back at the end of a year and discuss whether it was working for us. And now a year has passed.”

She nodded, and said nothing, looking at the floor. I wasn’t sure what to say myself, but I channelled my inner Miriam for confidence.

“Well then, Lily.” Glancing around to make sure nobody was watching us, I placed my hand over hers on the table. “I have very much appreciated our arrangement this last year. What do you say we continue it?”

She clasped her other hand over mine. “Ma’am, I’d like that very much.”

“Well, then!” Not so difficult after all.

“Phew. I was worried that you might not want to…”

“Really?” I looked up at her in shock. “It’s been fantastic. You’ve been fantastic.” And with the benefit of hindsight, I remembered that the hand-tapping thing was something she did when she was wound up about something. She was still doing it, though.

She glanced up at my face for a moment, as if to see whether I was joking, and then stared back at the floor. “Well. Thank you. I like it too. Erm, but…”

“But?”

She extricated her hand from mine, retrieved a notepad where she’d marked a few points. “I had a couple of things I wanted to ask about. If that’s okay.”

“Oh? Go ahead.”

“I was wondering if I could…” She trailed off.

“Speak up. What is it?”

“Is it possible to ask for a, for a raise?”

I frowned in thought, which she must have taken as disapproval, for she went on: “I’m sorry to ask, only my rent is going up and it’s costing a bit to visit my parents and—”

I held up my hand. “How much were you thinking?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure… maybe another hundred a fortnight?”

Her voice was very small, and I thought: _she’s probably asking for half of what she needs._ And I was feeling generous… in a Miriam kind of way.

“Why don’t we say two hundred? But for that, Lily, I may demand a little bit more of you.”

She blinked. “More?”

“You remember we filled out a checklist.”

“Yes, ma’am.” (Oh, to hear that word!)

“I would like you to go through that list again and pick out some of your soft limits. Things that you find scary but interesting. You’ll give me that list, and then during the next year we’ll choose three of those soft limits for us to try out.”

“Oh gosh. I, um…” She sounded ambivalent.

“It doesn’t mean you HAVE to do those things. If we get there and it’s really not working for you, you can still safeword out. And then I’ll figure out something else to try instead. I’m not going to make you do anything that’s going to cause distress… well, not more than our usual recreational levels of distress.”

Silence.

“Does that sound reasonable?”

“Yes, I think… I think I can do that.”

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

We shook on it.

“And what was the other thing you wanted to ask about?”

“Well, how long we’re extending this for.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Well, I didn’t want to… it would be easier for me, if I had some stability and certainty until I finish my doctorate. I need a new fridge and a proper bed, but I’ve been holding off on spending the money because I didn’t know if this was continuing. Uh, if you’re happy extending it that far. That should be about two years, if there are no disasters.”

“Sounds good to me. Just one thing, though, Miss Kapadia.” I scanned left and right for easily-scandalised patrons and librarians.

“Yes?”

“If I’m helping you pay for a new bed, I think it’s only fair that I get to enjoy you in it.”

It wasn’t often that I saw her blush, but it happened then, and very pretty it was too.

* * * * *

After the review we repaired to dinner at the same restaurant where we’d had our first date a year before. We chatted, in a Sarah-and-Anjali kind of way rather than Miriam-and-Lily.

She told me her news first. Mahesh was engaged (“it gets the parents off my back until the wedding…after that, though, there’ll be no living with them”) and her research was going places. I didn’t follow the finer details, but she had figured out something about how irregularities in the spin of neutron stars, caused by cannibalising hapless neighbours, might lead to fluctuations in their magnetic fields.

“…at least, that’s my theory. But I need to test it.”

“What does that involve?”

“Building a very big computer model and running it for a few months. The usual.”

We talked high-performance computing for a while, and then I told her my news.

“…so, Martin said I should apply. But I’m not sure.”

“Why not?”

“Scary new thing. It means… _managing_ people. I’d have three or four juniors to look after. I have no clue how to do that. I’ve never managed anybody.”

“You’ve been managing _me_.”

“Huh. That is true, yes. Though I don’t think spanking the juniors at work would be a good idea.”

“Everybody has to start somewhere. If you don’t apply, who would get the job?”

I shook my head. “Somebody from outside, I guess.” Hmm. What if we didn’t get along? “I think maybe I will apply. I’ll ask, at least. Oh fuck, I hope I don’t have to do an interview.”

Under the table, Anjali pressed her foot against mine. “I believe in you. Hey, speaking of promotions, did I ever tell you about my cousin who used to be a security guard at a Samsung store?”

I shook my head. I didn’t catch the glint in her eye until it was too late.

“Now he’s a Guardian of the Galaxy.”

“SOMEBODY’s getting a spanking tonight.”

Some hours later, we lay side by side in my bedroom, catching our breath. Anjali was on her belly, with a collection of red handprints on her backside, and I was now doing my best to soothe the sting by stroking with my finger-tips the area that I had so recently tormented.

“Sarah?” she murmured.

“Mmm?”

“What you said earlier, about my bed… I can’t do that, Sarah. I need to keep my place as my place. It’s so hard to have one place that’s just my own, I need to keep it that way. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Thanks for telling me.” I ruffled her hair and reminded myself that I still had a certain amount of sway over her, that she might find it hard to say no to me and so I should be careful in what I asked.

* * * * *

As promised, Anjali emailed me a few days later with a list of soft boundaries for us to explore, and that was when I realised I might have bitten off more than I could chew.

I’d been turned on by the idea of control, of bringing out Anjali’s delicious vulnerability by testing her boundaries. But I hadn’t given much thought to _which_ boundaries I wanted to test. As I read through the list I realised that most of the options didn’t actually appeal to me.

I’d sworn off handcuff play after the time Edgar and I fucked up and I had to find a twenty-four-hour locksmith. I couldn’t bring myself to slap Anjali’s face, and in any case she’d annotated that one with _not sure, willing to give it a try but quite likely I’ll end up safewording._ I didn’t own a vacuum bed, I didn’t know how to use a violet wand, and I didn’t know how to do fire play safely.

Obviously, some of those could be addressed with time and money, but it would involve going out and talking private sex stuff with people I didn’t know. That seemed very much like the opposite of fun.

I supposed I should have been proud, at some level, that Anjali had grown so adventurous. But it left me feeling a little inadequate as a domina, to see that there were so many options Anjali was willing to try and so few that worked for me.

Still, there were a couple in there that might be interesting—on the right day, in the right mood, if I psyched myself up—and a year is a long time. So I let it go for the moment. After all, I had more pressing things to worry about, like what the hell I was going to do about this promotion.

* * * * *

After several days of dithering I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. If nothing else, a raise would help me keep my Lily in basic comforts. It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford her, even with the extra two hundred a fortnight, but I was certainly noticing the dent in my own budget.

It was anticlimactic, in the end. I tapped on Martin’s door, before I could talk myself out of it.

“Hey Sarah! What’s doing!”

“Hey Martin. I, uh, I’ve thought about what you said, and yes, I’m interested in the manager position. How do I apply?”

When I joined the company as a shiny new PhD I’d started by filling out a written application, and then they’d grilled me over the phone for half an hour to establish whether I was enough of a nerd to join them. This time was much less formal.

“I’ll talk it over with Owen and Kepler”—they were the other two partners who’d founded our little company—“and we’ll let you know.”

And two days later he emailed to let me know the promotion had been confirmed. It was only much later that I realised why things had gone through so quickly and smoothly: Owen and Kepler were eager to fill the gap with somebody they knew and approved of, before the acquisition took effect and they had to deal with all the red tape that came of being a subsidiary of a much larger business.

I had my first official Management Meeting the following week. There was a mountain of administrivia associated with our acquisition. All our contracts needed to be revised, both the staff employment contracts and our arrangements with clients. We were moving out of our old office and into P-K’s. All our personnel data and all of our software management had to be migrated into P-K’s systems. Even the stationery and the website had to be updated. And there was one other thing…

“We’re joining their Christmas party this year,” said Owen.

“Big occasion,” said Kepler. “The merger, Martin’s farewell, and all.”

“Most of it’s booked already, but they asked us to help with some getting-to-know-you activities,” said Owen. “Icebreakers.”

“I was thinking karaoke,” said Kepler, and I winced.

“…you know what?” I said, as brightly as I could manage. “Would you like me to organise the icebreakers? I feel like you’ve both got a lot on your plates already.”

“Would you?” said Owen, just as Kepler said “Great idea!”

It might sound like a terrible decision, especially since I’d already burned myself out on organising a party that year. But there was method to my madness.

* * * * *

“EEE! You got it! I’m so happy for you!”

I had kept my good news secret from Anjali—and by extension, everybody else on Facebook—until I could tell her in person. It was a cold and rainy afternoon, one of those October days where spring changes its mind and detours back into winter. We’d had plans for a movie date, but I was feeling swamped by all the handover documents Martin had sent me, and couldn’t find the energy to go out in the rain and be surrounded by people. So I’d asked Anjali very apologetically if we could make it a quiet night in, and of course she’d said yes, and I’d blurted out my promotion before she had her coat off, and she’d squealed and kissed me.

(The squeal was new; a month ago she would have said “Gosh!” instead. I think she’d picked it up from her circle of friends, and was trying it out to see whether it would fit her. We do that kind of thing, assembling our faces from borrowed pieces in the hope of blending in.)

I enjoyed the kiss, and then led her into my abode. “I’m afraid I don’t have too much planned tonight, my brain is kinda wiped. Okay if we just hang out and get delivery?”

“Of course it is,” she said, same as she had when I’d asked the same question a couple of hours earlier. “Lots to do?”

“So. Fucking. Much. Martin sent me… nineteen different things I need to read through, and all of them have links to other things, and there’s so much to absorb, and I have to plan this Christmas thing as well.”

She nodded. “Professor Cheng said something to me at my last review.”

“Oh?”

“He said”—the rhythm of her speech abruptly shifted into Professor Cheng’s New England cadences, quite unlike her own—“‘Anjali, do you know what your biggest weakness is? You want everything to be perfect. But there’s no time for that. You need to know when it’s good enough, and then move on.’”

I nodded. “Yeah. I hear that. I know I spend too long polishing things that don’t matter. But how do I know which things _do_ matter?”

She shrugged. “I asked him the same question. He didn’t have an answer.”

“Ha.” And in a rush I kissed her again, hard and fierce, comforted in the company of somebody who came from the same planet I did.

We chatted, and as we chatted I flicked through dozens of emails, until I realised Anjali had stopped talking and was looking at me expectantly.

“Hmm?” I said.

“You didn’t hear what I said, did you?”

“I’m sorry. I just… got distracted. Thinking about all this stuff I have to get on top of.”

She nodded, and gave it some thought. “If it’s really bothering you, why don’t you focus on that for a while? I brought my laptop, I can keep myself busy. You do as much as you need to, and then let me know when you’re done working for the day.”

“Thanks. You’re an angel, Lily.”

I turned back to my laptop, and she got up. I was vaguely aware of her in the kitchen.

“There’s that white in the fridge. Would you like some?”

“I don’t—actually, yes. Why not?” I wasn’t in the habit of drinking alone. I kept a bottle of Moscato in the fridge against my mother and stepfather’s occasional visits; it had been there more than a year (longer than my arrangement with Anjali!) and I’d grown so used to looking past it that I didn’t even think about it now. But I wasn’t alone, and I could always get another one. “That sounds nice. Have a glass yourself if you like.”

“I believe I will.” There was a clinking, and she came by with my glass, and then we both sat in silence—me on the sofa, her at the table—tapping away at our laptops and sipping wine.

Some time later she got up, deposited her glass in the dishwasher, and made for the bathroom. I barely noticed what she was up to until she came back and sat on the floor by my side. She’d brought a small tub of soapy water and a couple of cloths with her.

“And just what are you up to?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing. You just go on with your work, don’t mind me.”

I did, as best as I could, until I felt her fingers tugging at my shoelaces, easing my sneakers free, tugging my socks off.

“Anjali…”

“Shh. Stop getting distracted. You have work to do, remember?”

She eased my feet into the water, comfortably warm, and began to wash them with a cloth. I can’t say that it did anything for my concentration, but it was very pleasant indeed.

Once they were thoroughly clean she began to massage them, stretching out my ankle and my calves, squeezing my arches, setting my toes a-curling. A little more pressure would have been painful; as it was, it was blissful. I gave up on trying to understand the implications of breaking our office lease early, closed my laptop, and lay back with my eyes half-closed.

Eventually she lifted my feet back out of the water and towelled them dry. “Thank you,” I murmured. “I needed that.”

“I’m not done yet.” I still haven’t decided whether the next part was weird or incredibly hot: she raised my left foot again, brought it to her lips, and kissed the sole. Then I felt something wet and warm against the ball of my foot, slipping upwards to slide between my toes. Her tongue.

“Oh gosh,” I said, and I heard her chuckle.

It was not something I’d have expected of her. She was fastidious about hygiene, had been even before she started her medical training. Even with my feet scrubbed squeaky clean, I knew this was a bold step for her.

She explored my toes, drew them into her mouth one by one, suckled and nibbled, and I squirmed in my seat, trying not to let my ticklishness ruin the moment. “Oh, good girl, Lily, that’s _nice_ …”

Then she moved to my other foot, and then I was wiggling my toes in her mouth as she toyed with them. Eventually she drew back and spoke. “Shall I continue, or should I leave you to work?”

“I think I’m done for the day.”

She smiled, and said: “Miss Miriam, congratulations on your promotion! Ma’am, I know I’ve only just started at your company, but I’d be so awfully grateful if you can help my career...”

“Oh?” I slipped into the purr so easily these days. “And why should I help you?”

“Oh, ma’am, I’d be ever so grateful. Just say what you need.”

“Well, Lily…” I leaned forward, feet escaping from her grasp, and ruffled her hair. “I suppose I could do with a personal assistant. But only if you’re eager.”

“Oh, ma’am, whatever you want! Just say it.”

“Well, tell me, Lily… have you ever been with a woman?”

“What, I—oh, certainly not, I’m a respectable girl—wait, you can’t mean—”

She was hamming it up thoroughly at this point, but then so was I. We hadn’t even drunk enough that I could blame it on the Moscato.

“Lily, I believe you said _whatever I want_.”

“Yes, ma’am, but not… I’m a good Vaishya girl. I would never!”

“Oh, well, that’s a shame, isn’t it? I can always find myself another assistant. One who _really_ wants this position.”

“Oh, Miss Miriam! Surely you wouldn’t be so dastardly as to make me do… _that_. I couldn’t. I’m absolutely straight.” Now _that_ was a bare-faced lie, and I made a mental note to punish her for it later.

“Let me tell you a secret, Lily.” I had my left hand behind her neck, stopping her from pulling away, and with the right I ran my fingers over her cheeks. “A straight girl’s mouth will do for me just as well as any other. It’s not whether you enjoy it, it’s whether _I_ enjoy it.”

“Oh,” she wailed, “you villain, you utterly despicable _villain_.”

“I suppose I am.” I pulled her back onto the sofa with me, and she fluttered her hands ineffectually against my chest. “It’s _so_ unfair, isn’t it? But that’s absolutely the most delicious part.”

I stroked her under the chin, then caught hold of the trailing ends of her scarf and used it as a leash to yank her face up to mine. “It’s _completely_ unfair and against all the rules, and I’m going to do it anyway, and get away with it. Because I want to.”

My lips brushed hers. She pulled away, as best she could, but I still had her collared. “This is how it’s meant to be, baby. If you weren’t here for me to enjoy…you’d be stronger and richer, wouldn’t you? You’d be able to escape. But you can’t.”

I flicked my tongue into her ear, and she flinched, and I whispered, “You’re so clever and hard-working and honest, Lily… if the world was fair, you’d be in charge of things. But instead? I’m the boss. And you’re going to do exactly what I want. Or I’ll fire you and find some other pretty face, one who knows what side her bread’s buttered.”

She closed her eyes and whimpered (not very convincingly). “You’d fire me? But you can’t, I have a contract…”

“I can do anything I want. I’ll just say I caught you stealing.” I’d popped one of the middle buttons on her blouse and slipped my hand inside, catching her breast as she tried to pull away, pinching until she squealed. “Shall I call security, pet?”

“Oh, Miss Miriam, please don’t! Please! You win. I’ll do what you want.”

“All of it?” I pinched her again.

“Oh! Yes, you brute, all of it.”

And she did, all of it. And when she was done, we left Miriam and Lily behind, and I plied my tongue and my fingers on Anjali until she was as thoroughly spent as I was.

She seemed pensive afterwards, and I offered her a penny for her thoughts.

“It works because it’s so true, doesn’t it? The world _is_ horribly unfair, and I get angry about that all the time. But it’s like you put it in a bottle, and somehow that makes it _fun._ I don’t understand it at all.”

“Me neither.” I cuddled up against her back, fitting my shape snugly against hers, and dozed off still trying to figure it out.


	8. Interlude: Truth, Lies, and Fiction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A word to the reader.

Storytelling is a funny thing. When you read a story like this, you’re giving somebody like me permission to tell you certain kinds of lies. You probably agree that it’s okay and even _sensible_ for me to lie to you about my name, and the company I work for, and a bunch of other things besides. I need those lies if I’m to tell this story at all. But I suspect there are other areas where you expect me to tell the truth.

There are a lot of unwritten rules about where authors do and don’t get to lie. But one important thing about autistic people is that we really, really suck at “unwritten rules”, so I’m going to use my words instead.

I aim to be truthful about human nature—as I see it—and in particular about autism—as I experience it. That last caveat is important. No two autistic people are autistic in exactly the same way.

One of the things I’ve been lying about is how we talk. Articulating stuff is _hard_ for me. When I’m writing, I can take the time to work it over and over until it comes out right, but that takes time and work. Talking in person, ad-lib, is a mess of stammering and hand-waving and half-baked metaphors. What I mean is—no, not quite that—it’s sort of but not quite—well, you know what I mean, right?

So, in the interests of keeping this vaguely readable, I’ve cleaned that up and distilled these conversations into something a bit more coherent. I don’t feel entirely comfortable about that, since the way I talk has a lot to do with my autism, but sometimes we have to do these things.

And then there’s sex. You may have noticed that when I’m writing about that side of my relationship with Anjali, I focus on the lead-up, and the after-play, and quite often I’ll skip the bits in between those two where, how shall I say this, orgasms happen.

Let me put it this way.

I like routine. Left to my own devices, I eat the same breakfast every morning: three Weet-Bix with milk, no sugar. I used to buy the same sandwich at the same place every weekday, until the lady behind the counter commented on that, and I felt embarrassed, and never went there again. Now I have five different places: Monday is chicken-avocado sandwich, Tuesday is fish and chips, and so on, so none of them realise quite how predictable I am. It saves me having to make a decision every day about what I’m going to eat, and it guarantees that I’ll get something I like because I’ve tried it before.

Perhaps you see where I’m going with this?

When it comes to physically getting off… I’m kind of same-ish, and I don’t want to bore you all by describing the same pattern over and over, and I don’t want to feel self-conscious about the fact that I end up doing pretty much the same thing most of the time. It’s fun to be there over and over, but that doesn’t make it fun to write about, or to read. And if I make up a crazy new sex position for us every time, by the end of this story I’ll be getting into confusingly weird territory.

What really turns me on, what’s different and fascinating and new every time, is getting to that position. The dance we do on the way into bed, and the way we look at one another afterwards. So, most of the time, that’s where I focus.


	9. A Walk In The Black Forest, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (with apologies to the late and sorely missed Tim Brooke-Taylor, fuck covid)
> 
> Sarah takes Anjali to the work Christmas party, gets to know one of her co-workers, and endures a fate worse than death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some consensual humiliation and food play.

Our new corporate overlords had decided to welcome us in style. For the Christmas party, they’d forked out for a tower restaurant with three-sixty-degree views (or if you’re a proper mathematician, two-pi views) that would have made the Eye of Sauron glow green with envy.

They’d even stretched the budget to plus-ones, so it seemed only natural for me to invite Anjali. After all, it would be a shame to waste a free meal, and with a bunch of new people to meet I felt like I was going to want some moral support.

She said yes, and hesitated a moment before asking, “As Lily, or Anjali?”

I frowned. “Um, I hadn’t thought about it…”

“Let me put it this way. If your boss asks me what I do for a living, am I an astronomer or am I your mistress?”

“Oh! Uh, yeah, let’s go with Anjali.”

* * * * *

I never know when to arrive at parties. Arriving on time is uncool, but arriving too late might mean missing stuff. This time, though, I’d found a way to avoid the dilemma: running the icebreaker game gave me a reason to be there early without being That Weird Girl.

I was quite proud of the game. We’d asked all the invitees to send me an unusual fact about themselves: John raises St. Bernards, Marjorie had once been an extra on “Prisoner”, and so on. As each one arrived, I checked them off a list and handed them a personalised bingo grid. Each square had one of those unusual facts, and their challenge was to talk to their colleagues and find people to match their squares.

I’d found the basic idea by googling “icebreaker games” but, being who I am, I’d made some improvements. (Or, as Ed might have said, “over-engineered the fuck out of it”.) Instead of just randomising the bingo grids, I’d keyed each invitee to their place in the organisation and customised their squares so that nobody could win without ticking off at least four people from outside their own work-group.

Nobody except me, that is, because for me the best way to win was not to play. I got to learn something about my colleagues and look like a Team Player without having to mingle and without having to reveal myself in return. I’d be happy to meet the new co-workers in time, just not all at once.

The rest of the Christmas Committee were from P-K, most of them shiny new grads almost ten years my junior who knew one another. The only ones my age were May from Payroll and Shane from Client Relations, and two names were about as many as I could easily absorb in one evening. I helped them set up the inevitable year-in-photos slideshow, and then retreated to my desk by the door as the other guests started to filter in.

“I’ll be late,” Anjali had told me, “I have a conference call with a couple of professors from Bern.” So I marked the time studying my list, trying to get some idea of who all these people were before I ticked them off and handed them their bingo cards.

_Maia. Accounts. Once returned a lost handbag to Olivia Newton-John._

_Jong-nam. IT. One of triplets._

_Lucy. Legal. Used to play poker professionally._

_Trevor. Client Relations. Plays the saw._

_Zhao. IT. Lived next door to Jimmy Barnes for two years._

_Sameer. Operations. Was captain and opening batsman for his high school cricket team…_

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

My head jerked up. It was Lucy from Legal. She’d arrived with a couple of colleagues, I’d given her her bingo sheet, and then apparently she’d circled back to me without her friends.

“I… I’m sorry, I’m bad with faces.” Until that night, I’d only met a handful of the P-K crowd face to face, and I didn’t recall her being one of them. Nothing about her obviously stood out, except for the bold pinstripes she wore, and I definitely didn’t remember those. “Was it in the contracting meeting?”

“No… somewhere a lot darker and smokier.”

I blinked, confused, trying to remember previous work parties. Last year we’d done an escape room, but I didn’t think she’d been there.

“Sisters of Mercy.”

“Oh… oh! You’re Heather and Thomas’ friend.” Now I knew the context, it clicked. I’m not entirely face-blind but I tend to remember people according to the context where I know them, so I’d been trying to recall her as a colleague and drawing blanks. “I had no idea you worked here!”

“Same. I think I’ve seen your name on some paperwork but I didn’t realise you were _that_ Sarah.”

“Well, nice to meet you… again.”

She smiled and tapped my arm. “I have to go mingle. Can I get you a drink?”

“No thanks, I’m good.” I remembered to smile back. “Catch you later. Good luck with the bingo!”

After that the crowds started to arrive, and for a while I was kept busy signing people in until one of the other organisers took over from me. I did the rounds and made appropriate amounts of chit-chat with the people I knew before getting a glass of water and retreating to the seats I’d staked out for myself and Anjali.

I was starting to feel overstimulated, so I took out my laptop and put on my best dealing-with-frightfully-important-emails face as a shield against random encounters. But I wasn’t alone for long before a pinstriped figure settled in next to me. “So, what do you think?”

“Hmm?” I had no idea what she was asking about.

“P-K. Must be a change, going from—is it twelve people at OwKeMa?— to this.” She waved a hand airily at the throng who were beginning to fill up the restaurant, the chatter slowly rising in volume. By my count, we had two hundred and seven people coming, and it looked like most had arrived.

“It is that. So many rules to learn. I’m still trying to get my head around the expense system.” There was a twenty-page manual on what I could and couldn’t put on my company credit card, and another on what to do with the receipts. At OwKeMa, the rule for me had simply been “whatever Martin’s okay with”, and I’d been there long enough to know without asking.

“More money, more rules.” She chuckled and sipped her martini. “Can’t complain, it keeps us lawyers in business. Look, feel free to ask if there’s anything you need to know.”

“I appreciate that.” I paused to run through my conversational checklist and realised we’d been talking entirely about me, and that might be rude. “So… poker? You play poker?”

“I used to. Made a bit of money on the circuit. Not enough to give up my day job but nice to have.”

“You gave it up then?”

“I did. I was doing okay, on average, but… too many ups and downs, you know? I didn’t like what it was doing for my mood, and I wasn’t enjoying it any more, so now I only play for fun. Why, do you play?”

“I know the rules, but it’s not my kind of game.”

“Oh? And what is your kind of game, Miss Weber?”

“I used to play a lot of Euro games.” I looked to see if I needed to explain that, but she nodded, so I continued. “Catan, Power Grid… all sorts.”

“Used to?”

“My ex and I—you know Ed, right?”

“Ed from Sydney? Not well. I’ve met him a couple of times.”

“Yeah. When I was there, we had a group, we used to meet up once a week and play. But then I went overseas for a postdoc and we broke up while I was away, and I didn’t make the effort to get back into it when I came back.”

“I know how that goes.” She drained the last of her martini, then planted the glass back on the table emphatically. “Anyway. So, you know my secret. What’s yours?”

“Me? I don’t have a secret. I’m the bingo coordinator.”

“I don’t believe you. Everybody has a secret—oh, _hello_. Does she always dress like that?”

I followed her gaze. Evidently Anjali had been doing some more sewing while I wasn’t looking. This time she was clad for summer, in a short and sleeveless dress made from lozenges of blue, green, purple, gold silk. She reminded me of some iridescent tropical fish, the kind collectors pay fortunes for.

After some gawping I eventually remembered that Lucy had asked me a question. “Uh, only for special occasions.”

“Well, you’re a lucky girl.”

I was trying to find the right reply to that when I saw Anjali coming over to us, and I re-introduced the two.

I had trouble reconciling the Lucy at my table with the one I’d met at the Sisters gig. It wasn’t just the clothes, nor was it the venue. Last time she’d been quiet, almost silent as the rest of us chatted; this time she was garrulous and just a little bit brash. Eventually I mentioned it in my heavy-handed manner:

“You’re a lot more talkative than last time.”

“Me? Oh yeah, I guess I am. I was a bit out of sorts last time. Got in from London the day before and still jet-lagged.” She explained that she’d been working for a British company for several years before returning to Australia to start a new job with P-K. “…so I’m still finding my feet back here in Melbourne.”

After that the conversation lulled, and I was just starting to think that I ought to start it up again—running through my interests to figure out which of them could reasonably be discussed without boring Lucy to tears—when we were joined by a knot of older men. Corporate types.

“Sarah, have you met Lincoln?” I had not, but we’d emailed. Lincoln Wedderburn was the local head of the Technical Specialties Group, which meant I’d be reporting to him from January. From his tone I’d thought him an older man, somewhere in his fifties, but in person he looked close to my age.

“Good to meet you at last,” I said. We shook hands. “And this is Anjali.”

“Ah, you’re Sarah’s plus-one?” he asked, and Anjali nodded. “And Lucy, have you brought anybody?”

“I don’t know anybody respectable enough to bring,” she replied, and Lincoln guffawed. But it sounded suspiciously like a deflection to me—I wasn’t sure if she was out to these people—so I interjected.

“Actually, I’m surprised Owen and Kepler didn’t bring plus-ones.” I’d gone through the guest list earlier, as part of my fun-organising duties, and noticed the empty spaces next to each of them.

Lincoln looked at me as if I’d said something peculiar. “Well, would you expect them to?”

I had missed something, and I wasn’t sure what. “I guess not…?”

“I thought they were one another’s plus-ones?” said Lucy, and the penny dropped. In hindsight it was obvious—they often arrived and left together, they’d take their holidays at the same time—but it’s not the sort of thing I notice unless somebody prods me to think about it.

“Kepler’s a nice name,” said Anjali, unintentionally saving me from further embarrassment. “Is he named after Johannes?”

“Anjali’s an astrophysicist,” I explained, then to Anjali: “And probably yes. His brother is Pasteur.” The sort of names ambitious Chinese parents give their children when they’re looking to Westernise.

“So, what does an astrophysicist do?” asked Lincoln, and that gave Anjali her opportunity to sparkle. I was glad of the break; I’d heard her script before, so I could nod and smile along and for a few minutes not have to worry about over-analysing my conversation with the new boss.

 _There’s nobody like you,_ I thought. _Watching you shine._ And as she talked, I diverted myself with idle fantasy.

I wasn’t _unhappy_ at the party, you understand. It was both nice and necessary to meet my new colleagues, and the vibe was pleasant enough. It’s just one of those things like swimming underwater, where you know that sooner or later you’ll have to stop, and even in the middle of things I try to snatch a breath where I can.

So I nodded along with Anjali’s explanation as I entertained the idea of taking her home and easing her out of that peacock-lovely dress, of my lips on the places that would best excite her, as my fingers tightened on my chair, until it got rather too much and I found myself stealthily composing a text message:

_Hi there, do you know if Lily’s free after this?_

But I didn’t send it, not then, because Anjali was talking about neutron stars, and it would’ve been rude to interrupt.

“…so if it happens near enough to Earth, and it’s oriented in just the right direction, then we lose up to half our ozone layer, and that’s our protection against ultraviolet gone. Super-sunburn and mass extinctions, probably.”

“That sounds… pretty bad?”

“It is, if we’re really unlucky, but—hey, do you want to see a piece of a neutron star?”

“What? You have one on you?”

“I don’t, but you do. Hold up your hand.”

Darren from HR held up his hand, and Anjali pointed.

“When two neutron stars crash into one another, they make gold, and all the other heavy metals. It sprays out across the universe, and perhaps billions of years later it ends up in a dust cloud coalescing into a planet. And then billion years after _that_ , we evolved and dug it up. That ring you’re wearing, once upon a time it was a neutron star. Probably several neutron stars.”

At that point dinner arrived. In between mouthfuls I made polite chit-chat with Lincoln, running every sentence through my How Do Normal People Talk filters before it left my lips, and explained what it is that I do—although, I was pleased to discover, he’d evidently read enough of the documentation to have the gist of it already.

We talked shop for much of the meal and I’d just gotten into my conversational comfort zone, discussing the things I knew best, when he leant in and derailed me with a few quiet words.

“By the way, I hope it’s not inappropriate for me to ask, but—is your friend single?”

“My, uh. Anjali?” _Obviously, you idiot, did you bring any other friends tonight?_

He nodded. I was flummoxed, several conflicting lines of thought careening off one another in my head, and there seemed no way I could reply without instantly regretting it. After rather too long a time opening and closing my mouth, I eventually managed:

“It’s complicated. Can I get back to you on that?”

“Sure.” I had to take his satisfaction at face value, and I was glad when the conversation at the table drifted on to the upcoming Ashes matches. I sat just a little closer to Anjali—the unexpected question had awoken some possessive feelings in me—and when I was sure nobody was looking, I hit send on my message.

I was close enough to hear her phone buzz, and she smiled a little when she read the message, but I couldn’t see what she was typing until I got the reply.

_Sadly Lily has to be at a symposium early tomorrow morning, and she needs a quiet night before. Perhaps in a few days? I understand she’s free on Tuesday evening._

That was four days away. I didn’t want to wait, but… _Tuesday it is._

I saw her read the message, and then she patted my knee unobtrusively as she put the phone away. Before I could make any response, Lincoln leaned over and signalled for my attention.

“While I’ve got you here, Sarah, I’d like to talk to you about how we’re going to integrate your team with our existing operations…”

I nodded politely as he spoke.

After dessert there were speeches—the P-K brass welcomed us into the fold, Owen said a farewell to Martin, I tuned out the rest—and the secret bingo prizes were awarded, and I was just beginning to think about how much longer I needed to stay before I could politely make my excuses, when May from Payroll took the mic.

“Now, those of you who’ve been with us for a while will know, we have a little Christmas tradition.”

This hadn’t been mentioned in the planning discussions. There were a couple of dozen empty chairs on the stage, and some sort of electronic-looking console. They must have been set up during dinner, while I was preoccupied. Again, not part of the plans.

“We like to keep it a surprise for our newcomers. Think of it as your grand initiation, getting to know you.”

I looked around at the other members of the planning committee. The new grads looked as surprised as I was. But Shane was up on stage now, placing a ring-bound booklet on each chair, and now I remembered that after a couple of our planning calls the two of them had stayed on the line “just to discuss one more thing”.

“We’d like each of the newbies to get up on stage, and then each of you gets to stand up and introduce yourselves, and then sing a song that means something to you.”

Fuck. _Karaoke_.

“We’re all among friends here, so don’t feel embarrassed, nobody’s going to judge you. And our selection has over thirty-five thousand songs”—Shane waved one of the booklets in the air—“so there’s bound to be something you like in there!”

Later, much later, I asked May why they sprung it on us as a surprise. She told me, as if it was obvious: “Well, Sarah, we found that sometimes if we told people about it in advance, they’d make excuses not to go!”

At Cassie’s funeral, I’d been asked to say a few words. I’d stood there at the podium, voice frozen in my throat, until some merciful grown-up had helped me back down.

I’m a perfectionist, and there’s little that scares me as badly as the prospect of making a fool of myself in front of an audience of colleagues and bosses. Over the years I’d learned to give technical presentations without choking up—with a _lot_ of preparation, going over the material for hours until I knew exactly what I wanted to say, down to every last ‘improvised’ joke along the way—and these days I can even do a wedding or funeral speech, if I have a couple of weeks to collect my ideas. But on the spot, unprepared? Hell no.

I wanted out so very badly, but it was too late. They were already calling us to the stage, and Shane was looking my way. So I bowed to my fate and climbed the stairs like some ill-fated highwayman ascending the gallows.

My one small consolation was that they’d decided to call us alphabetically. For once it paid to be a Weber, buying me a little bit of thinking time.

I barely noticed what the others said or sang. I remember Owen picked “Khe Sanh”, because he’d woken up to it every morning when he was in uni, and one of the P-K graduates gave a surprisingly competent rendition of “My Heart Will Go On”. Lucy, who’d taken this turn of events with better grace than me, belted her way through “Only Happy When It Rains”, because “I’ve lived in Melbourne and London and Melbourne again”. But beyond that, I was too preoccupied with trying to find something for myself.

Thirty-five thousand songs is a lot of choice—far too much choice. Most of them I didn’t recognise—too old, too new, too obscure, too mainstream—and of those I did, most were nothing special to me. Nothing against Bonjovi, ACDC, Bananarama; they’re all talented artists and I’ll happily listen to them when they’re on. But they’re not the songs that speak to me.

There were a few unexpected gems in there. In the right company I would have happily sung along with “Black No. 1” or “Christian Woman”, but for all May’s assurance, a party with my new colleagues didn’t seem like the time or place for ten-minute songs about loving the dead and sexualising nuns. For similar reasons, I reluctantly vetoed “Fucked With An Anchor”.

Flicking through, I noticed that at the end of the booklet there were some foreign-language options. _Let’s try the German,_ I thought.

The selection there was threadbare. Unsurprisingly, most of my favourites were unrepresented; the only thing newer than the eighties that I recognised was a children’s TV song about Schnappi the Little Crocodile. But the list was small enough that I could go through every song, and as I skimmed the oldies—not expecting to find anything—I spotted an old friend I hadn’t thought of in ages.

“…and now, Sarah, you’re up!”

I wobbled to my feet, walked over to the console, and keyed in my selection. “Hi all, I’m Sarah Weber. I’m one of the managers from OwKeMa”—that still felt weird to say—“and I work in mathematical logistics. Now, this is a song my grandpa loved, he always played it when I was staying at his place, and it makes me think of him. Marlene Dietrich sang this.”

One last moment of panic, as I belatedly remembered that there were several different recordings around. But then the accordion started, and it was okay, it was Marlene’s version.

“Vor der Kaserne, vor dem großen Tor

Stand eine Laterne und steht sie noch davor…”

It’s a soldier’s song. After a night out with his lady-love, he’s saying good-bye to her under the lantern at the barracks. A wistful good-bye, wondering if they’ll see one again, even as their shadows merge into one, and hinting that if he has to he’ll rise from the earth like mist to wait for her there.

I’d heard it a hundred times, I knew it by heart, but I didn’t even think about the girl’s name until I was singing it.

“Wie einst, Lili Marleen,

Wie einst, Lili Marleen.”

I looked for Anjali as I sang it, but all I could see was the lights in my eyes and behind them a shimmer of coloured silk.

Then the song died away, and my time at the centre of attention came to a merciful end, and I slipped offstage to find her.

“That was beautiful,” said Lucy, following me down the stairs. “I didn’t know you could sing like that!”

I made a small embarrassed noise. “You were great. I love Shirley Manson.”

“I met her once, at the bar after a show. Little brush with fame.”

“Well, it’s been great, but I gotta head out soon.” Lincoln was over at the bar, schmoozing with some of the other suits, and I wanted to escape before he could revive the topic that I didn’t know how to handle. “Lovely meeting you again, Lucy. See you around?”

“Sure! Say, if you do find a games group, let me know? My social life is kind of empty at the moment and I’m trying to make a few new friends.”

“Will do!” 

Anjali was at the middle of a knot of women who wanted to hear about her dress, another topic she was happy to entertain, so I waited for a quiet moment to butt in.

“Hey, gorgeous. I’m going to head out. Did you want to stay on?”

“No, thanks, I’ll walk out with you. Early start tomorrow.”

So I walked her to the tram stop. “I’ll wait until yours gets here.”

We were half-hidden from view by advertising posters on the tram shelter, and there was nobody else around, and the night felt deliciously dark and the lights were marvellously bright, and for a moment I forgot which version of her she was tonight and I kissed her. Only for a moment, as I felt her surprise, and broke off as soon as I remembered.

“Sorry. I forgot.” I took a step back.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Oh, I think that’s my tram coming.”

* * * * *

I didn’t know what to think about Lincoln’s request. I assumed it meant he was interested in dating Anjali, but I had no clue what that would mean for our arrangement, and trying to think through the possibilities made me feel an unpleasant kind of squirmy.

But I didn’t feel comfortable lying to her about it, even by omission, and I didn’t want it eating at me during our own date. So on the Sunday afternoon, after a couple of days of procrastination, I messaged her:

_Hey Anjali, just so you know, at the party Lincoln asked if you were single. I wasn’t sure what to say so I told him I’d get back to him._

Then I stayed up late, playing computer games, “just one more turn” over and over, telling myself I wasn’t waiting up for Anjali’s message. It came through at half past midnight.

_Thanks for letting me know. He seems nice, but I don’t have the time. Could you please tell him thanks, but no thanks?_

(It would take me another week to find the nerve to pass that on to Lincoln, but never mind that. He took it with good grace and I never heard anything more from him about it.)

_By the way. On Tuesday night. I’d love it if you wore the new dress again._

_Your wish is my command._

_And also…_

_Yes?_

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t really sure whether I wanted this, but I’d asked Anjali to push her limits a little, and I supposed I had to meet her halfway on that.

_How do you feel about ticking off something from your list? One of your three for the year. Soft boundaries._

_Did you have something in mind?_

Another deep breath. _I was thinking of switching? You dominate me for the night?_

It took some time before she responded. _Hmm. I’m not sure if I can do that. Let me think about it a bit?_

_Okay. No biggie if you decide you’re not comfortable with that._

By Monday night, with no further reply, I was just about to send a follow-up “never mind, I can see you’re uncomfortable with this one”, when she finally got back to me.

_I think I have an idea for what we can do._

_Oh good! How nervous should I be?_

_Oh, I’m not telling. But I’ll bring dinner._

And, not for the first time, I found myself wondering if I’d bitten off more than I could chew.

* * * * *

Anjali arrived at six p.m. in her regular clothes. Along with her overnight stuff, she’d brought a garment bag and a large cold bag.

“If you wanted ice, you should’ve just said. I have plenty in the freezer.”

She just smirked at me. “Let’s eat first. I stopped by the market at lunchtime.”

From the size of the bag, I had expected a feast. Instead she produced an appetising but modestly-proportioned selection of biscuits, cheeses, sun-dried tomatoes, and a tub of smoked mussels.

We ate, and chatted; I stroked her hand, and she held mine. When we’d finished our dinner and cleared away the plates I caught her by the shoulder and leant in to touch my forehead to her hair. 

“So, what do you have in mind for me tonight?” I whispered.

“I need a little time to prepare. I’d like you to go up to your room and change into… what you’d wear for your first day at a new job. And then wait. I’ll text you when I’m ready.”

I went upstairs, and selected my charcoal-grey skirt, and a nice sober blouse, and my good black Oxfords. Then I sat on my bed and waited.

And waited.

Since Anjali was taking her time, I took the opportunity to tidy up my hair and trim my nails. Then I sat again, and waited, and wondered what she had in mind.

I’d never played sub before. Oh, now and then I’d tested toys on myself so I knew just what I was inflicting on my lovers, but when it came to the main attraction I’d always been in charge, or at least an equal. I honestly didn’t know how I’d feel being on the receiving end or things—scared, silly, hot?—and that curiosity, I think, was part of why I’d chosen to push that particular threshold tonight.

Buzz.

_Miss Lily is ready for you._

* * * * *

She was seated at my dining table, watching me descend the stairs. She’d changed into the peacock dress—that I’d expected—and she’d made up, her eyes shadowed, her lips a deep plum-purple. At first I thought she was missing the scarf, until I realised she’d used it to tie her hair back.

“Good morning. You must be Abigail.”

“Yes, um, Miss Lily?”

“And you want to distribute my fashion line. I’m not surprised.”

I nodded, unsure how much she wanted me to improvise.

“You’re quite right. It would be a splendid opportunity… for you. But I have plenty of other distributors begging me for exclusive arrangements. Come here.”

She stood—eye to eye with me, I realised she was wearing heels—and I approached her, my shoes clicking on the tiles.

“Tell me, Abby. What on earth makes you think I’d do business with you?” Her voice was hard, the way I’d heard her mother talk to teenage Anjali when she was angry. “With you, of all people?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t understand.”

“You need this, don’t you? I’ve seen your financials, and I heard you’ve just lost the L’Oreal deal. You need something big to stay afloat, and you have the nerve to ask _me?_ ”

“I, uh, I’m not sure what I did, but—”

“Oh, Abby, Abby. At first I thought you were trying to sneak in… but you really don’t remember me, do you?”

“Remember you, ma’am?”

“Are you a parrot, girl?”

“No. I don’t understand.” And I really didn’t, but I assumed she knew what she was doing with this. I would just have to go with the flow.

“I want you to understand. Do you know why I started this company?”

“No, Miss Lily.”

“Sit down, and I’ll tell you—no, not there!” I had reached for a chair, but she slapped my hand away. “There.” She pointed to the floor beside her seat, and as I sat down on the tiles she took her seat again, turning it so it was facing me.

“Abby, Abby.” She touched my hair, scrunched it between her fingers, used it as a handle to tilt my face up to look at her. “Once upon a time there was a girl named Anjali who went to a birthday party. She was thirteen. There was cake. Black Forest cake. You know what a Black Forest cake is?”

I nodded, as best I could with her gripping my hair. “Chocolate and cherries and whipped cream.”

“It was such a delicious cake that after everybody had had a small slice, and she waited for _everybody_ to have firsts because she was a polite young lady, she went back and had seconds. Are you listening?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“One of the other girls at this party, one of Anjali’s classmates, thought it was very funny that she took a second slice of cake. She made a big thing of it, teased Anjali until she put her plate down and left it uneaten. She went away and hid herself until her mother came to pick her up.”

“Oh. I’m sorry—”

“How can you be sorry when you don’t even remember, let alone understand? Be quiet. I’ll tell you when I want your input.”

I nodded again.

“By Monday Anjali had gotten over it. Then she went into school and one of the girls who hadn’t even been at the party told her, ‘Your name is silly and weird so we’re changing it. From now on, you’re called “Cake”.’ And that’s what they called her for weeks and weeks, until they expanded it to ‘Chocolate Cake’. Do I need to explain why?”

Her grip in my hair was starting to hurt, but I shook my head. I could take a pretty good guess.

“Eventually they got bored and found somebody else to pick on, and Anjali went back to being ‘Anjali’. But she learned her lesson. Do you know what lesson she learned, Abby?”

“No, Miss Lily.”

“She learned that teenage girls aren’t allowed to enjoy food. It wasn’t all Abby’s fault, of course. All the books and magazines and TV shows didn’t help. Even her brother teased her about being chubby. But whenever she looked at a delicious slice of cake, it was Abby she remembered, telling her ‘your name is “Cake” now’.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m really sorry.” My bum and my thighs were aching; the floor wasn’t a comfortable place to sit.

“Shut up. I’m not done.” She tugged at my hair by way of reminder. “So she grew up, dieting and weighing herself every day. It didn’t _quite_ turn into a clinical eating disorder. But it was close, and she still spent so much time worrying about something so stupid. Then _eventually_ , after she’d finished high school, she started reading some of the right books and she started to realise just how badly she’d been had. But even after she understood it in her head, it was so hard to break those habits and stop treating food as the enemy.”

I’d known that teenage Anjali, of course. I’d tutored her, and even as I tried to understand exactly what my role was in this performance, I ached for her. She’d been a lovely kid, like so many of my friends who’d gone through similar trials.

“And it’s still something I have to work on. But it’s why I went into fashion, Abby, it’s why I founded Miss Lily’s. Every woman has the right to look good and feel good about herself. That’s my motto. That’s what I do here. Now, what do you think I should do with _you_?”

“I’m really sorry, ma’am. I was just a kid being mean. I didn’t understand.”

“I don’t think you did. I’m sure you got caught up in it too, Abby. You read the same books and magazines I did…”

Knowing what I did of Anjali’s childhood reading habits, omnivorous and insatiable, I thought that might be overstating things a little. But I knew what she meant.

“…so I’m going to give you a chance to show me what you’ve learned since then. Pay attention now.”

Letting go of my hair at last, she twisted to one side and picked up the cold bag. There was more in it still. She hoisted it up over my head and laid it on the table. I could hear her unpacking it. Something clanked against my table-top. Then she picked up the contents from the table and held the platter down for me to see. It was a large and very fancy-looking Black Forest cake, fat dark cherries and oodles of cream topped with shavings of chocolate.

“What do you think?”

I didn’t know how to answer, and she didn’t wait for my reply. She set the platter back on the table, and I could hear the soft tap-tap-tap of a knife against a plastic board as she cut the cake into slices.

“Come in close… closer than that.”

I obeyed, scooting in between her feet, close enough in front of her seat that I had to crane my neck uncomfortably to look up at her face. She planted her feet on my thighs, and for a moment I wondered if she was about to dig in with the heels. That would have _hurt_ , and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. But apparently that wasn’t what she had in mind.

“Now watch very carefully.” Above me, she served herself a wedge of cake on one of my saucers; I supposed she’d purloined that from the kitchen while I was upstairs. Then she began to eat, holding the cake in one hand and the plate underneath it in the other, now darting her tongue across the top to slurp up the cream and chocolate shavings, now biting into the sponge base and the cherries in between. She wasn’t noisy about it, but she wasn’t silent either, lips smacking as she devoured it. I could smell it, too. Rich and fruity and creamy, and just a hint of alcohol.

Halfway through she paused and looked down at me, lips discoloured with chocolate and smeared cream. The plate had caught most of the crumbs, but there were still a few on her dress. “What do you think, Abby? Am I beautiful?”

“Yes, ma’am. You really are.”

“Good girl. For that, you get a little reward.” She stuck her fingers into the cake and extricated a cherry, which she offered to me. I began to reach out, but she shook her head.

“No hands.”

So I leant forwards and took it between my teeth. As I did, she slipped her fingers into my mouth.

“I want them back clean.”

I couldn’t bite on the cherry without biting her fingers as well. Instead I had to push it around my mouth with my tongue, crushing it against my teeth, squeezing it until it came apart in smaller pieces and I could swallow, and then my attention returned to her fingertips. I sucked and slurped and licked until every last trace of that bittersweet confection was gone from them… and then, of course, she plunged them right back into what was left of her slice, consuming it chunk by chunk until there was none left, at which point she gave them back to me to clear once more.

When there was nothing left of that slice, she ruffled my hair and smirked at me. “Well, that was good. Do you think I ought to have seconds?”

“Yes, ma’am. If you want to.”

“Really? It’s not greedy or weak of me?”

“No, ma’am. It’s just food.”

“I’m glad we agree on this. Here, why don’t you clean the plate for me?”

Lily handed me the saucer and I sat between her knees, licking off the crumbs of chocolate sponge and the smears of cream as she started on another slice. Having given me the saucer, this time she had only her hands to catch stray fragments, and so things were getting messier. I felt a couple of crumbs land in my hair—I’d want to wash that afterwards—and a stray dollop of cream glanced off my cheek on the way to the floor.

“Oops. Do take care of that, Abby, there’s a good girl.”

So I wriggled around and stooped to the floor. Aside from the cake debris, it was cleaner than I remembered leaving it, and I suspected Anjali might have given it a quick once-over while I was dressing. It was just a small fragment of cream, and I stuck out my tongue and lapped it up. Yes, there was a hint of kirsch there.

A soft pressure at the back of my neck. The sole of her shoe. Not forceful, just firm enough to suggest that I was to stay there a little longer. Well, I’d already licked the floor, I might as well do the job properly. So I searched, flicking out my tongue to pick up errant crumbs one by one. After a little while of this, when I’d cleaned up all I could find, the pressure eased off. I took that as my cue to sit up and look to her for further direction.

Lily beamed down on me, her satisfied and cake-smeared expression bordering on smugness. But her clothes…

“Your dress, ma’am!” The floor and I had caught a few pieces, but some had ended up on her dress, like texta on the Mona Lisa.

“You’re sweet to worry.” She touched my nose with her fingertip, and left another smear of cream behind. “But my first rule of dressmaking, never wear what you’re not prepared to clean. The second rule is, don’t stint on fabric protector. Why don’t you get off what you can?”

She sat back and spread her legs as wide as the cut would allow, so that the creases were flattened. I started at her hem, hovering over the shimmering material, hunting out the fragments of cake. The crumbs came off easily, a flick of the tongue; the cream took more work. Lily helped, in her way; she wiped the cream off my nose and cheek again, so I wouldn’t get more on her, and then with one hand in my hair—gentle, this time, steering not tugging—she guided me to the spots I might have missed. I nuzzled at her belly and her bodice, and when I’d caught all that I could, she pulled me up to clean her face like some enthusiastic puppy. I licked her chin and her cheeks, and inevitably I finished in the middle, in a deep cherry-flavoured kiss.

“Oh dear,” she said after we eventually broke off, “you’ve missed some.”

“Where, ma’am?”

“Down my cleavage. I think there are a few crumbs. Do you think you can reach?”

I tried valiantly, but it was clear that my tongue was neither long enough nor prehensile enough to finish the job.

“Well, then. Let’s get this in to soak, shall we?”

She rose, and after she’d helped me to her feet, I helped her out of her dress, since it was snug enough to give her some difficulty with the zipper at the back. Then we took it to the laundry and rinsed it thoroughly in the sink before putting it in the washing machine with detergent that Anjali had brought.

“Let me know if it needs dry cleaning. I’ll pay for it.”

“You most certainly will.” Anjali, clad only in her underwear and spectacles, squeezed my arm. “It should be fine though.”

I noticed that the mop wasn’t quite where I usually left it. “You cleaned the floor?”

“Not the whole floor. Just that part.”

“Much appreciated.”

“I was very nearly a doctor, remember? Only the most sanitary floors for _my_ plaything. Speaking of which, my dear, we’re not done yet.”

With the machine merrily humming away, she led me back to the dining table. She sat back on the edge next to the cake and held me close, removing my glasses and guiding my head in between her breasts to search for the crumbs there that, I highly suspected, did not exist. Eventually she sighed, reached back behind her, and slipped out of the bra, leaving me free to polish her delicious skin unhindered, eventually guiding me left and right to suckle on her.

“Mmm. That feels good. Everything that goes in your mouth should feel good, Abby, no cause for shame. Now, what have you learned today?”

“Ma’am, I’m very sorry for how I treated you. I’m sorry I spoiled so much for you.”

“Mmm-hmm. That’s good to hear, dear. But I need to be sure you’re not just saying what I want to hear. Let’s see if you really understand.”

She hooked her thumbs into the elastic of her panties and stepped out of them, sitting back down on her chair and guiding me back down to my knees, looking up at her once more, her knees either side of my shoulders.

“Have a cushion, dear.” She slipped out the one she’d been sitting on and passed it down to me, and I gratefully arranged it under my knees. 

“Now, tell me about my thighs.”

“Your thighs, ma’am?”

“You’re close enough to them.” She squeezed her legs together a little, pressing me between them. It was a comforting feeling, and I thought briefly of Temple Grandin’s hug machine. “Tell me about them.”

“They’re, uh… I really like them. I really can’t explain why.”

“Are they the right size? Not too thin, not too thick?”

“Are they… that’s not my call. I don’t get to say how you should be.”

“A good answer.” She stroked my hair. “But you’re allowed to like them. I like that you like them. What do you want to do with them?”

“I like the way you react when I touch them.” I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to use my hands yet, but I ran my fingers up her calves and she didn’t object, so I took the liberty of venturing further up. “I want to stroke them.” Which I was already doing. “I want to kiss them and lick them.” I brushed my lips against her skin, and felt that electric flicker. “I adore the way you react when I do that.”

“Mmm. That sounds very nice, but… not just yet.” She pushed my head back, just enough to break the contact. “Do you know what the most important thing about my thighs is, Abby?”

“…no?”

“They stop my knees from falling off.”

I had difficulty keeping myself from cracking up. But she continued. “Now, Abby, I’m satisfied that you’ve learned how to treat me with respect. But you haven’t really learned the lesson until you’ve learned it for yourself. You’ve only had crumbs so far. Would you like some cake?”

I opened my mouth to say “yes”, but she put a finger to my lips. “Wait. Don’t answer right away. Think about it.”

I thought about it. About the tantalising morsels I’d had already—a single cherry, a lick or two of cream from her fingers and the floor, crumbs and spots almost too small to taste—and about the state of my own stomach. Yes, I was hungry. Yes, I’d liked what I’d had.

“Yes, ma’am. I would like some cake.”

“A no would also have been a fine answer. You don’t have to have anything you don’t want. But I’m glad you do, because this is one of my favourites, and there’s way too much for me to eat on my own.”

She took another good-sized slice of cake from the table and offered it to me, held in her cupped hands, between her thighs. “Go on, then.”

Close up, it looked delicious and smelled heavenly. “Thank you, Miss Lily.” I leaned forwards, my hands against her knees to balance myself, and went in face first.

It was every bit as tasty as it had smelled, the cherries flavoursome and fat, and just enough bitterness in the chocolate to stop the sweetness from cloying. Eating hands-free would have been messy enough on its own, but she was ‘helping’, nudging the cake towards my face, not always directly into my mouth. Before I was half done, my face was liberally smeared with Black Forest from the nose down, and I needed to pull back for a moment to wipe a stray blob of cream from my eyelid.

“Sorry, ma’am, I’m a bit of a mess,” I said, with black-juicy chunks of cherry still sloshing in my mouth.

“You are, aren’t you? Look up at me.” She had her finger under my chin, directing my gaze upwards to meet hers. “Are you my little guzzling piggy?”

“Yes, I—no.” I caught the trick question just in time. “No, Miss Lily, I’m not. I am a woman who is eating a scrumptious cake because I want to.”

“That’s right. Well done, Abby. Now if you _want_ to be a little piggy later on, well, maybe we can work something out. But eating cake doesn’t make you one. It just makes you a more satisfied woman with a full stomach.”

I nodded and mumbled agreement, and then returned to my dessert. For the last of it I had to work my tongue hard, to get at the last pieces of sponge down between her fingertips.

“Look up at me,” she said, and as I did I heard a shutter click: her phone. “You can delete this right away, but I wanted you to see what you look like.”

I looked like the world’s sloppiest clown, my face a blur of pink and white and brown. I grinned at her, and then rested my head against her thighs a moment.

“Oops,” I said, “I got it on you again. Guess I’d better clean that up…”

* * * * *

Later, after we’d showered and packed half a Black Forest cake into my fridge and climbed into bed together, she said, “Well? How did I do?”

“That was… really not at all what I was expecting. Where did that all come from?”

“Abby’s real. I was so angry about it. For years. Long after high school. I used to think about ways to get back at her. Getting rich and famous and then showing them all, you know?”

I nodded.

“And one of the ways was just, well, stuffing her full of cake. Make her eat until she was sick, and then keep on feeding her for months so she’d get fat. And then, I don’t know. Maybe she’d be sorry, or maybe just everybody would laugh at her.”

“I hadn’t picked you for the vengeful type,” I said. But I think most of us autistic folk have a streak of that in us. We’re slow to forgive injustices and insults, and prone to brood on them, for an injustice means the world isn’t working correctly, and who can let that kind of knowledge go?

“Well, I didn’t do it. I didn’t even trash her schoolbag when I had the chance. But I thought about it. The version you got was much gentler than the version I used to have running through my head. But still, I didn’t feel comfortable doing it. I thought about it as soon as you suggested us switching, but I didn’t feel like I could treat you like that.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I was thinking about another fantasy. You were ludicrously rich, the kind of rich person who gets to make their own rules. You were visiting my campus some day, and you spotted me, and just decided to take me. Bang, kidnapped, private island, never mind all my plans, your slave for until you got bored with me. As a fantasy… that was really hot, but I was also uncomfortable about liking it. I wanted to sort of… balance things out? To have a go of the other side, to show myself that I could? Because if I can dominate you, even just once, then I know it’s fantasy and not real, and that’s okay… does that make sense? It sounded better in my head.”

“I sort of get it. I think. So what did you think?”

“I’m glad I tried it. I don’t think I’d do it again though, unless you really wanted to. It was a lot of work. I spent hours working out scripts for that, thank you for not going outside my scripts by the way, and I had to drag up some unpleasant memories.” She sighed. “I doubt it’d actually work out like that. I Facebook-stalked Abby a couple of years back and I’m pretty sure she’s still a cow. She wouldn’t get it at all. But thanks for being the pretend-Abby I wanted. You?”

“Similar, I think? I’m glad we tried it, and I had fun, but it doesn’t feel like something I’d do often. Have to be just the right situation with just the right person. And I’d need to _really_ trust them.”

“Uh huh.” She snuggled back into my arms. “So… cake for breakfast?”

“For _breakfast?_ Is that even allowed?”

“I allow myself. You can allow yourself too, if you want. You’re an adult, Sarah.”

“Theoretically.”

“Theoretically, yes. Good night.”


	10. Wood For Sheep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anjali has a blow-up with her parents. Sarah introduces her to board games and Lucy joins them.

January is my favourite time to work. It’s so quiet while everybody else is off on holiday, and I can get stuff done without constant distraction. It was especially welcome the year we joined Preussler-Kennedy, giving me the chance to settle into the new office without having to deal with all the new people at the same time.

Change, as I may have said, is bad. Our acquisition by P-K meant I had to get used to a new commute, find five new places to buy lunch, and get to grips with all the small and not-so-small differences between the old work and the new. OwKeMa had been pretty informal about administrative stuff, as small businesses often are. P-K had an official system for everything from stationery orders to getting a flickering light fixed. That wasn’t so bad—I like systems—but there was a lot to learn.

The toughest part was getting my head around my new responsibilities. During the Christmas party Lincoln had talked to me about reorganising the Technical Specialties teams to align the work we were bringing in with P-K’s existing projects. By that stage in the evening I was in autistic overload, unable to take in more than half of what he was saying, but I didn’t want to show weakness and I’ve never been great at saying no. So I’d nodded and agreed to everything he said. Some people wake after Christmas parties with hangovers; me, I woke to find myself “Director - Logistics Projects”.

This meant that as well as the scheduling and warehousing work that I’d brought over from OwKeMa, I was now responsible for something to do with freight tracking and supply chain management, topics I knew next to nothing about. In the space of three months, I’d gone from being responsible only for myself, to running two different teams totalling eight people, something for which I was far from prepared.

I spent a large chunk of January buried in documentation about SKUs and inventory management software and a hundred other things, trying to get to grips with what my new team was doing and how it all worked. Every time I felt like I was starting to understand the tracking work, I found myself losing my grasp on the important details of the warehousing side of things, and every time I refreshed myself on the warehousing work I found the tracking stuff slipping through my fingers once more.

Normally I would have vented to Anjali about it all, but she was away on another family visit to Mumbai. We rarely managed to be online at the same time together—time zones didn’t help—and every time I tried to write an email to her I ended up second-guessing myself, feeling silly for complaining about something that anybody else would’ve considered a success.

* * * * *

Lucy returned from holidays in early January, and promptly appointed herself my tour guide to the neighbourhood around our office. Every Tuesday and Thursday, when our schedules synced up, she’d drop by my desk. “Are you doing anything for lunch? Come on, I’ll show you a little place…”

She knew a lot of little places. I followed her down cobbled laneways and up narrow staircases to one eatery after another, well-hidden places that I would never have found on my own in a month of exploration. Dumpling houses, Italian cafés, tapas joints, sushi parlours, you name it: most of them priced for students and all of them delicious enough for me to overlook the break in my routine.

Every time she’d ask me how I was settling in, and I’d tell her “not bad”, and then we’d chat about inconsequential things. Until one day, as I was cautiously sticking a spoon into a bowl of dumplings swimming in an orange-red haze of chili oil, she asked a follow-up question.

“Sarah, if you’ll excuse me asking, when you say ‘not bad’ what does that mean to you?”

“It, uh.” I had to think for a moment. It was one of my scripts, the default answer to a how-are-you. Sometimes we get so used to the mask that we forget that it’s possible to take it off. “To be honest, I feel a little bit out of my depth. There’s just too much to keep track of and I’m doing my head in.”

“The new team?”

“Uh-huh.” I’d just eaten a dumpling and I could feel my lips tingling from the oil. “I’m taking on this project I haven’t worked on before, and…”

In between mouthfuls of flavoursome incendiary, I monologued at her about my woes. She nodded along for most of it, just asking a question here and there, and when I stopped for a drink to soothe my mouth she leaned forward a little.

“Is this your first time managing people?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Smack me down if I’m out of line, but… Sarah, I’ve only known you a little while, but I hear you’re scary smart. I get the impression you’re really good with details, and you’re a perfectionist. Am I wrong?”

I shrugged, shook my head slowly. I’m no good at accepting compliments, but all those things had been mentioned by my previous bosses more than once, and I took some pride in them.

“Can I give you some advice?”

“Okay?” I replied.

“I know you’re a giant shiny brain and I love that, but it’s also a kind of a trap. People like you, you’re so good at the details and you get praised for it, so you get the message that it’s always going to be your pathway to success. But that only goes so far. You’re still human. If they give you more and more responsibility, eventually you _can’t_ be on top of all the details, and if you try to do that you’ll just break yourself.”

I coughed as a trickle of chili seared its way down my throat. “So… what then? How can I manage my team’s work if I don’t understand it?”

“You need to understand some of it, but not all of it. Understand the big picture, but beyond that… you have to learn to trust your team. Not _blind_ trust, it doesn’t mean you walk away from it and leave them without guidance, but you need to give up some of that control and let them do their bit. They might not do it the same way you do it, they might not be as perfectionist as you about it. All that matters is whether they can do it well enough. You’re there to help them when they get stuck and help them get better at what they do, not to hover over their shoulders trying to do it all for them. My rule of thumb is, when you’re feeling a little bit guilty and wondering if you’re delegating too much work to your reports, that probably means you’re delegating about the right amount.”

I toyed with another dumpling, watching the oil swirl in the bowl. “That seems… I don’t know if I’m good at that. It’s hard to know how much I need to know.”

“Of course it is. Nobody’s born good at managing teams, it’s a skill that needs to be learned. Give yourself permission to suck for a little while. Speaking of learning, you know we have training courses for this?”

“We do?”

“Oh yes. Let me fill you in…”

She talked me through the intricacies of the corporate training programs, and halfway through I asked her to stop for a moment so I could take notes. Then we strolled back to the office together. My head was buzzing, and I was far outside my comfort zone, but for the first time in weeks I didn’t feel absolutely doomed.

* * * * *

Late in January, about a week before Anjali was due back, my phone woke me at one in the morning at the end of a weekend. It was an overseas call from a number I didn’t recognise. I was about to drop the call when I blearily remembered that 91 was the country code for India.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Sarah?” There was noise in the background. It sounded as if she was somewhere crowded, but there was also an engine rumbling and traffic.

“Anjali? What’s up? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.” I knew the cadences of her speech well enough to tell she wasn’t. “Sarah, can I borrow some money? I promise I’ll pay it back as soon as I can. I’ve got some saved up, I just can’t access it in a hurry.”

“Sure. What do you need?”

What she needed was a ticket back to Melbourne as soon as possible. She was already in a bus on her way to Mumbai Airport, with her phone battery on twenty percent, and for reasons that she wouldn’t discuss in front of strangers she couldn’t or wouldn’t use the return ticket her parents had bought. I figured she’d tell me when she was ready.

Neither of us was sure how long it would take a money transfer to clear, so in the end we agreed that I’d buy the ticket for her and send through the details and the bill. By the time I’d done that it was three in the morning. I went back to bed, but I was wide awake, my mind whirring through every conceivable scenario that might explain the evening’s drama. I wanted to help, and I didn’t know how.

In the end I decided that if I couldn’t fix the situation, I could at least do something nice for Anjali. If I had my time zones right, she’d be arriving at the airport in the evening, with her flight not due until mid-morning the next day. Remembering my Dutch trip, I thought—why not upgrade her ticket, so she could at least stay in the business lounge and have a little bit of space and quiet on the flight?

Perhaps it was a silly plan. It was a lot of money for a few hours’ comfort—I could’ve booked a week in a decent hotel for the cost of an upgrade to business—and I would have balked at spending that much on myself. But I needed to do something, and this was something, and I couldn’t think of anything else so I did it. Then, having impulsively spent a couple of thousand dollars in the small hours of the morning, I went back to bed and finally managed to fall asleep.

I woke to two messages from her. The first: _You shouldn’t have._

The second, sent several hours later: _But thank you. Business lounge is nice. Got to switch off now, ttyl._

She was due to get in early Tuesday morning, and after some consideration I texted her back: _Want me to meet you at the airport?_ My protective mode had been triggered, and after several weeks of almost no contact I was suddenly feeling her absence.

There was no reply. I wasn’t sure if she’d received my message. Unsure whether to take her silence as yes or no, I waited until four p.m. before making my apologies at work and arranging to take the Tuesday off. I got up early and caught the Skybus to International, and waited at the exit point from Customs.

Several flights had landed more or less together, and the queue was badly backed up. I waited for almost an hour before at last the Mumbai passengers started to trickle through. Mercifully, Anjali was among the first of them. She had her head down, and from her shock when I hailed her I realised she hadn’t seen my message.

“Sarah?” She didn’t seem pleased or displeased to see me, just confused.

“Hey. I sent you a message but I don’t think you got it. I was worried about you.”

“Oh, sorry,” she mumbled. “I had my phone switched off.”

“Battery?”

She shook her head. I waited for her to elaborate, but when no elaboration was forthcoming I said, “We’re blocking traffic here. If you want to talk, you’re welcome to come by my place. I’ve got the day off. Or I can just head home and we catch up later…?”

“Sorry. Can’t think. Give me a moment.” She pulled her suitcase into a corner, out of the traffic, and then took out her phone, swapped over her SIM card, and powered it up. After a while the screen came on. A moment later: buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz. I could see a host of message notifications.

She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “fuck”, and powered the phone off again. “Sorry. Yes, maybe I will stop by yours, actually. I don’t want to be findable just now.”

We took a taxi back. She sat in the back seat, fiddling restlessly with a pen, while I rode next to the driver, who was in a chatty mood and hadn’t noticed that we weren’t. I did my best to deflect him from bothering Anjali, who remained almost silent, and eventually managed to steer him onto the topic of roadworks, which kept him occupied until we arrived back at my place.

It had been some hours since Anjali had eaten, and I hadn’t breakfasted, so I made us some muffins. She sat quietly at my table, still rolling her pen between her fingers, until food was ready. Only after eating did she speak again.

“Sarah, can you do me a favour?”

“Sure?”

She switched on her phone. “Can you please go through my unread messages and delete anything from my family? I can’t deal with reading them and I don’t want them sitting on my phone.”

“Okay…?”

She handed me her phone and I did what she had asked. There were a lot of messages. Most of them looked to be from her parents, and those were in Hindi. In among them were a few others from names I vaguely recognised as family members, and a couple from her brother Mahesh in English. I deleted them as quickly as I could, but couldn’t help reading a few:

_hey A where r u?_

_sis u got to call mum and dad_

_not funny A they’re going mental here_

“I had a fight with my parents,” she said flatly. “They said some things. I said some things. I couldn’t stand it any longer so I came home.”

“Aw.” I touched her shoulder gently, unsure whether to offer a hug.

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if I could get away from them at all but we were sharing a room and they just kept pressuring me.” She was stimming with the pen again.

“What about?”

“Oh, everything. All my life choices. The degree, my lack of interest in getting married, did I mention Mahesh is engaged so now it’s officially my turn, my moving to Melbourne. Then Mama said if I wasn’t looking to marry and wasn’t going to pursue a proper career then maybe I should look at moving in with them after I finish my doctorate. It’s a thing she does, she makes it sound like she’s doing me a favour, but… neither of them are getting any younger, if I move back with them I’ll be taking care of them for the rest of their lives. I’ve seen it happen so many times. Is that selfish of me?”

I shook my head.

“I told them I plan to live alone and they said I was ungrateful. She called me _andar se gora_ , it means ‘white on the inside’, said I must be ashamed of them from the way I behave.”

She was twiddling the pen furiously, staring into space. “Oh, Sarah, I do love them, but… god. They just don’t understand. I don’t think they will ever understand.” At that point the pen flew out of her hand and clattered on the floor. She stared after it, and I handed her one of mine.

“They’re right, I’m too white for the family, but who was it sent me to a school full of white girls? And I’m still too brown for the white people and I’m too weird for the normal people and I’m too brown and female for the weird people. Fuck! I just, I just… and they think I _want_ to not belong anywhere?”

She set my pen aside—wrong weight, wrong texture perhaps, I don’t know—and I clasped her hand. “I got really angry and I think I burned some bridges. Then I grabbed my bag and went for the airport. When I got there, once I had my ticket, I left them a message saying I was going to be out of touch for a while and then I switched off my phone. Sorry I missed your message.”

“It’s okay.”

“I just want to be in my apartment and not talk to anybody for a week. But I know my parents, they won’t let up until I talk to them again, if they can’t reach me on the phone they’ll have somebody knocking on my door. Sarah, is it okay if I stay here for a couple of days?”

“Always.”

“Not… working, I mean. Just staying here.”

“Yes. Of course.” I tried to remember what one says to houseguests. “Do you need to do laundry?”

“As a matter of fact, I do…”

We threw her clothes into the washing machine. She was yawning and swaying as she separated the colours, and I realised she was exhausted. “Feel free to use my room if you want to crash out for a few hours. I’ll set you up on the sofa later.”

“You’re the best. I was hoping to push through until evening but… not going to happen. Didn’t sleep at the airport, not much on the plane either.” She wobbled up the stairs and closed the door behind her, leaving me alone to wonder what might come next.

I didn’t have to wonder for long. Mrs Kapadia phoned not ten minutes later, trying to find out what I knew and where Anjali was. She obviously didn’t want to admit to what had happened, so I put on my best chirpy voice and asked a series of innocent questions - I had thought Anjali wasn’t due back for another week? Was everything all right? Should we call the police? That succeeded in discomfiting Mrs K enough that she didn’t quiz me too hard—just as well, I’ve never been good at outright lying—and I promised her that if I heard from Anjali I’d pass on a message.

Anjali emerged at about two, and I dutifully relayed the message. She rolled her eyes.

“I love them, I really do. But they don’t even believe I’m autistic and when I try to tell them what I need, they just think I’m being difficult. Sometimes I think I should just find some nice gay Brahmin boy who’s up for a lavender marriage. But it probably wouldn’t…” She shook her head, trailing off.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Just thinking… I think maybe one day they’re going to finally understand that I can’t be the daughter they want me to be, and I don’t know what happens then. I’m scared that I’m going to lose them altogether.”

I hugged her; she hesitated for a few seconds, and then leant into the hug, hard, and started to cry. I patted her shoulder in the slow, stupid way one does when confronted with another person’s distress and unable to solve it.

Eventually she said, “Well, I’d better get my things out of the wash”.

As we were hanging up her underthings, I asked her, “Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t think so. Well, to be blunt, the money helps. At least I’m not financially dependent on them. Beyond that... I don’t know what I need. If I figure it out, I’ll tell you.”

We ended up getting pizza—she insisted on paying her half—and chilling out on the sofa watching a Bollywood film on my cable while Anjali rattled off the names and histories of every actor to appear in shot. I was vaguely aware that she had a group of desi girlfriends who’d go see the latest Indian releases together, but it wasn’t something I’d seen first-hand before, and as she talked I realised this was a comfort thing for her, like me tracing the lines of my tattoo.

Before Cassie died, she and Mum and John and I used to watch crime shows together. It was a topic of amazement for them that I—socially oblivious, the girl most likely to be hoodwinked by any passing liar—could usually pick the villain within about fifteen minutes into a one-hour show. At the time I couldn’t explain to them how I did it, but now I understand better: every show has its rules. Chekhov’s Gun, the seemingly inconsequential dialogue that _must_ be significant or they wouldn’t have put it in, the person who has no obvious motive or opportunity for murder and must therefore be the murderer… it’s _nice_ when you understand the rules. The hero and heroine will find a happy ever after (though if you’re queer, not so much); the guy with a guilty conscience will get the opportunity to redeem himself, though it’ll cost him his life; the murderer will face justice of one kind or another. Every pain and every joy fits into the bigger picture; it all makes sense in the end.

Nothing like real life, where so often the gun goes unfired, the happy ending never arrives, the murderer dies old and rich and comfortable. After Cassie died, well-meaning people told us “everything happens for a reason”, and I half burned out my brain trying to understand what that reason was, before I came to understand the lie.

Anjali had her laptop out, and as we watched I noticed she had a spreadsheet open. I didn’t mean to pry, but it’s hard not to look, and what I saw puzzled me. It was a list of names—some I recognised as friends of hers—and dates, highlighted mostly in reds and oranges, with several columns of other data and text. She had the spreadsheet sorted from reddest to greenest; every so often, she would pull out her phone, and do something with it, and then she’d edit the spreadsheet and one of the red entries would turn green.

Without meaning to, I spent rather longer than might be polite looking over her shoulder, trying to work out what it was, before realising that I’d been staring so long it verged on spying on her. At that point there was only one thing to do.

“Excuse me, but if you don’t mind me asking, what’s the spreadsheet?”

“This? Oh.” Anjali reached for the remote, and paused the movie in the middle of a song-and-dance number. “It’s silly, but… I lose track of how often I’ve been in touch with my friends. Sometimes I’d just pick up the phone and call somebody to say hi, and they’d be very cross with me because I hadn’t talked to them in months and they thought I was cutting them off on purpose. And sometimes I got anxious about one of my friends because it felt like it was always me calling her, never her calling me, so I worried that I was annoying her and she was trying to ignore me until I went away.”

“Oh. Yeah, I can relate.” It’s something I’ve had great difficulty explaining to friends: how I can like somebody a lot, even love them, and yet forget about their existence for months on end.

“So I started keeping records. I update when I contact them or they contact me, and when we get quality time together. So for my friend Varsha, if it’s been more than three weeks, it turns orange, and more than six weeks it turns red. Different time allowances for different people.”

“Huh. That’s… kind of clever.”

She smiled sourly. “It would be if I wasn’t awful at remembering to use it. And to update it when I talk to people. I didn’t realise quite how bad things were going in Mumbai until I opened it the other night and saw a sea of red.”

“I have to ask. Am I in it?”

“In theory yes, but I haven’t figured out what the rules ought to be. Obviously we see one another every fortnight, but I don’t know if it counts when I’m… working. Is that friends time too, or is it different?”

“Dunno. I think I’d need to ask a philosopher for that one.”

And then we went back to the movie, and Anjali went back to info-dumping about the rivalry between Bollywood, Tollywood, Mollywood, and several other -ollywoods that I’d never heard of before. As her spreadsheet slowly turned from autumn colours back into spring, she began to sound a little less stressed.

For my part, I had to keep reminding myself to keep my hands off. It was strange; I’d grown so accustomed to having license to touch her as I wanted, and now I wasn’t sure where the boundaries lay when we were together as friends. Hips touching as we sat side by side: probably okay. A hand on her thigh, probably not, and I almost broke that one a couple of times from force of habit. I was startled when she turned on the sofa and laid her legs across my lap, and she must have noticed, for she immediately twisted back to sit straight on.

“Sorry! My back is still a bit sore from travelling, I wasn’t thinking. I’m so used to—”

“Oh, you too?” I grinned. “Look, make yourself comfortable. I won’t tell if you don’t. I promise not to get handsy.”

So she lay back, legs across my lap once more—like friends who are just physically comfortable with one another, I reminded myself, not like that other thing—and we watched as good prevailed over evil, a treacherous rival was vanquished, and the beautiful people drove off into the sunset together.

* * * * *

I was working the next day, so I tiptoed past Anjali (fast asleep on my sofa-bed), leaving her with her spreadsheet and my Netflix password to keep her busy. Mrs. Kapadia called again late in the morning; I told her Anjali was back in the country, and I’d passed on her message but I didn’t have anything more to tell her, and so sorry but I have to go to a meeting now.

Around afternoon tea-time, Lucy dropped by my desk. “Hey Sarah. There’s a bunch of us going to a trivia night down at the Oak”—that was one of the local pubs—“and there’s a spot for you in the team if you want to come.”

“Oh, I’d love to. Only, I have a friend staying over.” I didn’t name Anjali, because I thought Lucy might start speculating if I did.

“Bring ‘em along!”

“Well, I’ll ask…”

I wasn’t at all sure Anjali would be in the right state of mind to spend time with strangers, but I emailed her—she was still keeping her phone switched off—and to my surprise she said yes.

At about half-past five I finished up my work and drifted over to Lucy’s area, where a handful of others had already congregated. “Everyone, this is Sarah,” Lucy said. “Sarah, this is”—and she reeled off a bunch of names, most of which faded from my memory before she’d finished speaking. The team leader was Trev, a moustached pal of Lucy’s from Legal who I’d noticed at the Christmas party, but the rest, mostly colleagues of Trev’s, were all a blur.

“Nice to meet you, Sarah. Lu says you’re bringing a friend?”

“Yeah, she’s meeting us there.”

Anjali, as usual, was early and waiting for us. As Lucy walked in ahead of me, I could see the moment of recognition before she turned back to me with a look that was half a question and half a knowing grin.

 _It’s not like that_ , I thought. But I wasn’t sure what _that_ was.

We did the introductions—Trev remembered her from the party—and when the others were distracted with a drinks order I whispered to Anjali. “Didn’t think you’d want to come. Let me know if it gets too noisy.”

She stood on her tiptoes and whispered back in my ear. “I’ve been putting off calling my parents all day. Thank you for giving me an excuse to procrastinate some more.”

I wasn’t convinced that was a good thing, but I was hardly one to judge, and besides I could feel Lucy’s eyes on the back of my neck as we whispered. So I didn’t argue.

One of the unwritten rules of pub trivia is that your team has to have a comical name, preferably a pun, preferably smutty. Ours was “Quizzy Stradlin”—apparently Trev was a big G’n’R fan—and we were up against Quizzically Fit, Yer A Quizzard Harry, Multiple Choicegasms, and last of all Finding The Quiztoris, who I strongly suspected were yet to do so.

* * * * *

“Anne of Cleves, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr, Catherine of Aragon… who’s the other one?”

“Jane somebody?”

“Yes! Jane Seymour, thanks Lucy.”

I’d forgotten how much I enjoy trivia. It’s where my ability to remember useless stuff really comes to the fore. Between Anjali and myself we blitzed the science, history, and geography content, with the rest of the team covering for our deficiencies in TV, music, and sport—though even there I managed to get one about Adam Goodes, thanks to my stepfather’s devotion to the Swans.

After the second round of questions I had to whisper to Anjali again, “We should slow down a little and give the others a chance to answer,” since I realised some of Trev’s friends hadn’t yet been able to volunteer an answer. By the half-time break we had a decent lead and along the way Trev had won a pitcher of beer for the table in a side contest.

While Anjali was trying out the beer, I slipped out to the ladies’ room, accompanied by Lucy. We’d left our run a little late so there was a small line.

“You two have been _brilliant_ tonight!” she chirped, as we waited in line.

“I’m glad Anjali’s having fun. She’s had a really shitty week.”

“Oh no, that’s no good!” A couple of women emerged and the ladies ahead of us went in, leaving us alone in the corridor. Lucy took me by the shoulder. “Hey, Sarah?” She was speaking just a little too loud for the distance.

“Yeah?”

“I know it’s hard in a new workplace when you don’t know people, but… it’s okay to be yourself, it really is. You’re among friends, nobody here is going to judge.” She looked at me earnestly, perhaps over-earnestly.

“Uh, that’s, I’m not really sure what you mean?”

“You and Anjali? You don’t have to do the ‘just good friends’ act for our benefit. Nobody at that table is going to be bothered if you say ‘girlfriend’.”

“What—oh! No, Anjali’s not my girlfriend.”

“ _Really?_ Oh shit, Sarah, I’m sorry. My gaydar has failed me.” She looked mortified.

“No no, it hasn’t failed you, just… Anjali and me, we’re not like that.” At that point one of the Multiple Choicegasms arrived in the line behind us, eager to congratulate us on our sterling first-half run, and thankfully that was the end of that line of conversation.

We won the night by five points. Our reward was a victory dance from Lucy and a voucher for a hundred dollars of drinks, redeemable at next week’s trivia.

“You’d better come back and help us drink it!” said one of Trev’s friends.

“I can’t make it next week,” said Anjali. “But maybe in a fortnight?”

“I’ll be there next week,” I said. _See! Definitely not a couple._

* * * * *

Anjali and I strolled back to my place together. From the Oak it was about a forty-five minute walk, but the night was warm and pleasant.

“You have fun?” I asked her.

“I did. Lucy is nice!”

“She is. Shall we do this again?”

“On what basis?”

“Eh?”

“As a hanging out as friends thing, or as a date thing?”

“Oh.” I pondered that. “What would the difference be? I mean, I wasn’t planning on, uh, you know, in the pub.”

“Timing. If you want to make it part of our fortnightly bookings, that would be fine. But if it’s a friends thing, on top of our dates, then I need to work out my time…”

“Fair enough.” Doing a PhD doesn’t leave one with an awful lot of spare time.

We walked past bookshops and coffee houses, past the twinkle of places that hadn’t yet taken down their Christmas lights. I would have loved to have Anjali along on a regular basis—we made a great team—but I didn’t want to commit _all_ my date nights, especially since a Wednesday night would mean both of us needing to work the next day. “Shall we make it a hanging out as friends thing?”

“I’d be delighted! I will come when I can, but it might only be once a month or so.”

We stopped for ice cream on the way home, at a little Italian place. It was already soft, and melting faster than I could eat it; by the time we got to the lifts in my building, I had a dribble of lemon-mango running down my hand.

As the sliding doors closed behind us, I said, “I’m sticky. You know what to do,” and pressed my fingers between Lily’s lips—

No. No, I didn’t do that. Because she wasn’t on duty that night. But god, I wanted to, and after I’d said my good-night to Anjali and left her on the sofa-bed, I lay there in my own bed and rubbed myself to a pleasant little shuddery climax imagining it.

Oh well. No reason we couldn’t have ice cream another night.

I woke in the wee hours of the morning to the sound of the loo flushing, and my sink running, and then a familiar set of footsteps pad-padded towards my bedroom, and a familiar body settled in beside me under the doona.

“Anjali…?”

“Mmm?” I didn’t know what to say, but after a few seconds she murmured, “…oh, I’m in the wrong bed, aren’t I?”

“I suppose so.”

“Sorry. Forgot. So used to…”

“I don’t mind. You can stay if you like. Plenty of room.”

“Should go back to my bed… just in a minute or two…”

By the time I’d counted sixty in my head, Anjali had long since settled back into sleep. I turned my back to her and folded my arms, just to be sure my own hands wouldn’t wander in my sleep.

* * * * *

I was vaguely aware of Anjali’s warm presence next to me during the night, but when I woke again in the morning sun she was already up. Neither of us raised the subject of her nocturnal wandering.

“That was a lovely night out,” she said over breakfast, “but it’s time for me to face the music.” She’d been jotting down notes, things to say to her parents. “I need to do this before they come back home, otherwise they’ll probably fly straight to Melbourne and start searching house-to-house.”

“That’s a lot of houses.”

“Sarah, have you _met_ my parents?”

“Yeah, point taken. Do you need moral support? I can call in if you—”

“No thanks, it’s good of you to offer but I’ll do it.”

“Okay. Well, I’d better get going if I’m going to make my tram, but give me a buzz after if you like.”

“Will do.”

She messaged me around lunchtime:

_Talked to them. Going home now. Thanks so much for your hospitality._

_My pleasure. How did it go?_

_About as badly as I’d expected. But not worse._

_I’m sorry._

(She would fill me in a few days later, when she had processed enough to talk about it. They had patched over the superficial things, resolving the messy business of Anjali’s abrupt homecoming with a “let us never speak of this again”. But the underlying conflicts were still there—“I can’t even _talk_ about these things with them, not really”—and Anjali expected trouble down the road. I thought she was probably right.)

That afternoon, Lucy caught me by the water cooler. She was rather more subdued than she had been the previous night. “Hey Sarah.”

“Hey Lucy, how ya doing?”

“Hey, just wanted to say, I’m sorry for any offence last night. Sometimes I don’t know when to shut up.”

“No, no. We’re fine.”

“You sure? Only you were looking at me like I was on the nose, and you haven’t talked to me all day.”

“No, that’s just… just how my body language is.” At least, I assumed it was my body language, because that’s usually the explanation when somebody misreads me. “And I’ve just been snowed under all day, things on my mind. I promise we’re fine. If I had an issue, I’d tell you.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.” She hesitated. “By the way, if you’re interested, we have a Pride group here, meets once a quarter. I can get you an invite if you like. It’s pretty low-key, but we have free biscuits.”

“Sure, why not?”

* * * * *

So Wednesday-night trivia with Lucy, Trev, and the rest of Quizzy Stradlin became part of my weekly schedule. Most nights we placed in the top three, and when Anjali joined us one night in February we won again. On the other weeks I got to know some of my colleagues from other parts of the organisation, in a setting that showed me at best advantage, although sometimes I got the feeling parts of the conversation were going over my head.

“So you two knew one another already?” Trev asked us one evening in the scoring break between rounds.

Lucy nodded towards me. “I was at a concert with friends and I saw a lady wearing the most amazing dress. I pointed her out and my friend Thomas said ‘oh, I know the woman she’s with, the one in the boots, I’ll introduce you’. So that was Anjali and Sarah. And then months later we bumped into one another at work!”

She was getting loud again—I’d noticed she had a tendency to get louder as the night went on—but then she dropped her voice and leaned in towards me. “I should have said back then, by the way. Nice boots.”

“Thanks! I got them when I moved to Germany.” I started telling her about how I got them, but after a little while talking I noticed she no longer seemed to be paying attention, so I let it slide as the host called silence for the next round.

Later in the evening, after we’d collected our second-place winnings (another voucher for more beer next week), Lucy escorted me to the tram stop. “You’re good to get home?” she asked.

“I am. It’s just a short tram ride.” But I appreciated her solicitude.

“You know, Sarah… I just realised I didn’t ask the right question last time.”

“What question?”

“If it’s ‘not like that’, with you and Anjali”—she did the air-quotes with her fingers—“then what _is_ it like?”

I froze, and she shook her head. “Don’t mind me. I’m just a nosy bitch and it’s none of my business. Well, here’s mine. See you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow!”

It was in March, Anjali’s third showing, that pub trivia was Ruined Forever. Our usual host had moved on to bigger and better things, so we had a new guy. He’d changed the format a little, adding a couple of new events where the team who guessed closest to his secret number got bonus points.

“It’s not right,” I grumbled, as the Yer A Quizzards edged ahead of us. “Trivia’s supposed to be a contest of skill, not luck.” Beside me, Anjali nodded, equally indignant.

Anjali perked up next round, when we were asked how many moons Jupiter had. “Oh, I know this one! Seventy-nine. I was just reading about it the other day.”

But the answer, according to our host, was sixty-seven.

“That’s not right,” Anjali said.

“Excuse me?”

She stood up. “It’s seventy-nine. They discovered twelve new ones earlier this year.”

“Sorry, that’s not what I’ve got in my answers.” He pointed to his laptop, as if a thing being written in a document made it true.

“Well, it’s wrong. I can find you Sheppard’s paper if you want.”

“I have to go off these answers. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair if I just gave away points every time somebody didn’t like the official answer. Now, where was I? Question 7, the answer is… Liberia.”

“But it’s not fair _now_ ,” muttered Anjali dejectedly, sitting back down. The rest of us nodded agreement.

“Trivia events really need a court of appeal,” said Lucy, probably not entirely seriously. “Absolute power corrupts ab-so-lutely. Speaking of Absolut…”

Despite these setbacks, we managed to claw our way back to a tie with the Quizzards. “Sudden-death tiebreaker,” said the Worst Host. “One representative from each team. First correct answer wins.”

“Do you want to go?” said Lucy to Anjali, but she shook her head, still fuming over the Jupiter question. “Righty-o then. Sarah?”

I shrugged. “I’ll give it a go.”

I stood at the front alongside the head Quizzard, and Worst Host cleared his throat. “Which English poet was described as—”

“Lord Byron,” I said.

“—mad, bad, and—what?”

“Lord Byron,” I repeated. “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

“Okay.” He walked up to me, lowering his voice. “Want to tell me how you knew the answer before I asked the question?”

“Excuse me?”

“Were you looking at my screen?”

“What? No.” I was trembling now, suddenly in fight-or-flight mode. He was calling me a cheat, wasn’t he?

“How could you _possibly_ know the answer before I asked the question?” His voice had risen again, and although I didn’t turn around, the quiet behind me told me that the other contestants were paying close attention to us.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Apparently it wasn’t. “He’s the only English poet who gets ‘described as’. None of the others has a line like that.”

“Come on, you don’t expect me to believe you thought through all that before I even got to saying what he’s described as.”

“It’s the truth,” I said, because it was.

The head Quizzard was shaking his head in disbelief, and I was trying desperately to think of something to say, when Lucy stepped up behind me. “This is bullshit. You’re calling my friend a cheat?” Somehow, despite being shorter than the host, she managed to loom over him in her business suit. “You should watch your—”

“ _Lucy_ ,” said Trev.

She turned. “What.”

“Elsa time.”

For a few seconds she stared at him. Then she shrugged. “Whatever.” She strode back to the table, threw her bag over her shoulder, and marched out. I followed, and Anjali followed me, and the rest of our team came after, spilling out onto the footpath as the conversation behind us rose to an excited buzz.

“Well that fucking sucked,” Lucy remarked to nobody in particular, startling a hen’s-night party who were just passing by.

“It did. Thanks for having my back,” I replied. “You okay?”

“Just pissed off. He had no right.”

“And he’s a bad quizmaster,” added Anjali, who I suspected was still holding a grudge the size of twelve small moons. “It’s just not the same.”

“It’s only a game,” Trev said, as his mates stood around looking as if they’d rather be somewhere else.

Lucy scowled. “Not a good one.”

“Look, I’m heading home. You should do the same.” And so we each went our separate ways.

* * * * *

Lucy and I had lunch together the next day at a Chinese-Vietnamese noodle house.

“Sorry about last night,” she said. “That was kind of shit.”

“It sure was. Maybe we can find another place—”

“Actually, Sarah, I was about to tell you… Trev already has one lined up. Tuesday nights at the Swan. You and Anjali are very welcome, but I think I’ll give it a miss. Don’t let me stop you, though.”

“Oh no! How come?”

She scowled. “I’m trying to cut down on the amount of my social life that involves alcohol.”

“Oh. Fair enough.” I hadn’t really paid attention to her drinking when we’d been out, but in hindsight, that would explain a few things.

“But like I said, don’t let me discourage you from going. I know you two would still be very welcome on the team.”

I thought about it. “We could do something else? Doesn’t have to be trivia.”

“Sarah, that’s very kind of you to say, but Trev is a creature of habit and he’s got his heart set on this new place.”

“No, I meant _us._ ”

“Like, you and me?”

“And Anjali.”

“Oh, yes, and Anjali.”

She was frowning, so I tried to reassure her. “I’m not much of a drinker anyway. I’m happy to find something else, and… Trev is nice and all, but I enjoy hanging out with you, and I know Anjali does too.”

“Aw, shucks. What were you thinking?”

“Hadn’t got that far yet, but I’m sure I can think of something. By the way, what’s ‘Elsa time’?”

“Oh, that?” She smiled faintly. “Joke between Trev and me. It means ‘let it go’.”

* * * * *

Anjali and I had a date that weekend. She was helping me pick a birthday present for my mum, since I trusted her taste in clothes above my own. We’d settled on a nice jumper and we were about to tram back to my place for an afternoon of mild to moderate debauchery when I noticed a new sign: GAMES PIXIE - BOARD GAMES, CARD GAMES, RPGS - TRY OUR LIBRARY!

“Hey, Anj… Lily, how are you on board games?”

“Like Monopoly?”

I bit back an oh-god-no. “Sort of, but much better.”

“I think I’d like them? I haven’t played much except for a couple of sleepover parties and things when I was little. I had a roommate who played something called Magic, that looked interesting, but I was trying to save money.”

“Probably a wise choice. Well, I think Lucy said she wanted to find a games group. Maybe that’s something we could do? Want to give it a try first and see if you like it too?”

She smiled at me, and twirled the end of her scarf. “Madame, I am at your disposal.”

It had been some years since I’d been inside a gaming shop—it had been one of those Edgar-and-me things that I’d reflexively avoided since our split—and my experiences back then hadn’t always been good. Back before Ed transitioned, he’d been building a space-battle-nun army (best not to ask, really) and the only shop that carried the discontinued models he was after was the kind that comes with an invisible “no girls allowed” sign. When we managed to get the owner’s attention, he’d assumed we were shopping for our boyfriends and answered us with monosyllables until we took the hint and left.

(Ed went back several years later, after the T kicked in and he’d grown out a scraggly kind of beard, and the same owner had fallen over himself to hook Ed up with an ultra-rare Mother Cruciatus Exterminatus still in her original blister-pack because “you’re the sort of guy who’ll appreciate her”. Go figure.)

But, to my relief, Games Pixie wasn’t that kind of place. The clientele were a roughly even mix of men, women, and several varieties of other, and behind the counter was a tall lady with a colourful punky ‘do who smiled at us as we entered.

“Hi! Let me know if I can help with anything!”

“I was interested in the games library…”

“Sure! Two dollars gets you any game in the library for the day.” She waved at a shelf in the back corner. “Just bring them back when you’re done, and let us know if you find anything missing. And if you find anything you want to buy, the two dollars comes out of that.”

I handed over a gold piece and we picked our way past the shiny new games in their shrink-wrap, and the even shinier dice, and the sleeves full of trading cards, and the racks of miniatures and paints, to the corner where the loaner games awaited us.

“Well, Lily, what would you like to play?”

My companion had already pulled out a box decorated with playing cards, each painted with a surreal scene. “I like the artwork on this!”

“Oh wow, that is cool… bah, minimum three players. Maybe we can try it with Lucy.”

“Okay, what about this one?”

“Sure. I’ve heard good things about it, but never played. Let’s give it a go!”

We repaired to an old pleather couch in a quiet corner behind a rack of plastic scenery and sat side by side reading through the rules together, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her leg against mine.

“…oh, so there are two different kinds of cards!”

“Yes, so these ones are the routes we’re trying to connect, and _these_ ones are what we spend to build our railroads.”

“That makes sense.” She pointed at New York on the map. “You know, back in the whaling days, the whaling ships used to bring their catch here to be measured?”

“Oh? I didn’t know that.”

“Yes, it was the whale-weigh station.”

I sighed loudly.

Soon enough we were ready to play. She moved around to sit opposite me, in a high-sided armchair that made her look tiny, and for the first few turns we just picked up cards—there wasn’t much we could do until we’d amassed enough to start building. I had just completed the set of greens I wanted when Anjali laid claim to the Seattle-Portland connection.

“NO, you can’t do that!” I exclaimed. “I need that line!”

She picked up her piece. “I’m sorry! I can take it back if you want it!”

It took a moment to realise she was serious. When I did, I chuckled and shook my head. “It’s okay, I was just trash-talking… huh, you really haven’t played board games before. Hang on, time out a minute. No, leave that on the board, you earned it.”

We paused the game while I shared a lesson that had taken me a long time to learn. “Different people have different playing styles. I get very competitive within the rules of the game, and I’ll call people names if they’re beating me, but it doesn’t mean I’m really upset. It’s just part of the game. And if you’re not comfortable with it, I don’t have to do it, so just tell me.”

“Okay.” She thought it over. “Like Lilabel and Tanglespine?”

It took me a moment to translate bedroom games into board game expectations. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“When we played Monopoly, Mahesh used to get really angry if he lost. Usually I just let him win.”

“Ah, yeah, don’t do that with me. I expect you to play your best.”

She nodded. “He was only five though. He’d probably be better now. Probably.”

“Yeah. So, it’s important that everybody agrees on a playing style they’re all happy with. I know some people who cheat, like lying about their cards and so on, and that doesn’t work for me. It’s not the kind of game I wanted to play.”

Anjali looked shocked at the idea that anybody would do this.

“Anyway, so yeah, you made a legit play and if that’s what your strategy involves, you should do it. But unless you object, I will kick up a fuss about it.”

She smiled. “I think that will be fine.”

We resumed play. Gradually she drew her cards and laid down her lines, advancing her route one step at a time: Seattle to Portland, Portland to San Francisco, San Francisco to LA. Meanwhile I just kept on amassing more cards, occasionally building an isolated line here and there: Vancouver to Calgary, San Francisco to Salt Lake City, Houston to New Orleans.

“That’s a lot of cards you’re holding there,” she observed, as she laid down LA to El Paso.

“It is, isn’t it? Guess I should play a few.” I lay down six greens, El Paso to Houston, and her face fell,

“I wanted that line!” She picked up a couple of reds.

“Really? So that means… you probably want this one too.” I filled in Dallas to Houston, blocking off an obvious detour.

“Oh, that wasn’t very nice, Sarah.”

“How long have you known me?”

She shook her head ruefully. “Long enough to know better than to expect _any_ kind of mercy from you.”

“Good good.”

She started drawing cards again, trying to repair her strategy, while I spent what I had amassed, filling in the gaps to coalesce my isolated lines into a network. El Paso to Santa Fe, Calgary to Helena, Helena to Salt Lake, Santa Fe to Denver and then Denver to Salt Lake. Then up through the east to New York, as Lily completed a laborious spiral to arrive at New Orleans via Atlanta.

(I had thought about grabbing the Nashville-to-Atlanta route, which would have ruined what I correctly assumed was her backup plan, but by that stage I knew I was well ahead and I didn’t want to play meaner than I needed. From a mathematical perspective, in a zero-sum game there was no difference between gaining twenty points for my own network and forcing her to lose twenty points from hers, but I had learned at the cost of a friendship or two that human egos didn’t work that way, and I didn’t want her first gaming experience to put her off.)

“Ouch,” she said, when we tallied up the score. “And you’ve never played this before?”

“No, but I’ve played enough other games to know some basic strategies.”

Anjali nodded. “What did I do wrong, then?”

“Would I be right in thinking you looked at your routes, worked out the fastest way to link all those destinations together, and then just built it out from start to finish one line at a time?”

“Well, that was the plan, before some jerk _ruined_ it.”

I nodded. “Games like this, flexibility is usually important. If you make your plan too rigid, somebody’s going to do something that destroys it. So you want to have multiple paths to victory. Like here, _this_ line was important for me to link up Vancouver and San Fran, if you’d blocked that I would’ve been stuffed. So I concentrated on grabbing the important ones early on. After that, there are a lot of ways to fill in the middle, so even if you’d guessed what route I wanted to make, it would’ve been very expensive for you to block it. It does mean I’m probably giving away a bit more information about what I’m trying to do, but by the time you have that information, there’s not much you can do to stop it.”

“Oh, I see that.”

“The other reason this one’s easy for me is that it’s not too different from some of the stuff I do for work. Trying to make things robust so they don’t fall over if one link fails. So… what did you think?”

She frowned and studied the board a little while. “That was fun. I think I would like a rematch some time, but maybe we should try something different. How about the one with the hexagons? Is that the one you said you used to play with Edgar?”

“One of them, yeah, but I don’t remember the rules very well. I think it’s supposed to play better with three, but it works for two.”

“All right, then. I think I need a coffee first. You?”

“Sure, thanks.” While she was up getting drinks, I returned our first game to the shelf and started setting up the second. Sitting back on my couch in the corner, looking over the other players, I felt that comfortable sense of being among my people. _Yes, I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed this_. 

She returned, handing me my coffee and sinking back into her chair. “So tell me more about trash-talking? Are all kinds of insults acceptable?”

“Hmm.” I tried to compile my unwritten knowledge into tangible rules. “Not everything. It depends on the people you’re playing with. The better you know them and the better friends you are, the ruder you can get. It’s sort of… the game is to say something that they _know_ you don’t mean? So Ed used to call me an ‘insufferable bitch’ sometimes, and I’d call him an ‘absolute shithead’, and that was our way of congratulating one another for a clever play. But I wouldn’t do that in front of strangers, or if Ed and I were pissed off with one another. And you wouldn’t go for something that was actually a sore point with them. It’s meant to be friendly, not hurtful.”

“Okay. Now, how does this one work?”

“Well, we’re trying to build settlements and cities on this island, and each space produces one kind of resource…”

Anjali went first, and she grabbed the most productive spot on the board, but she hadn’t paid enough attention to the mix. Soon enough she was picking up all the wool and clay she could want, but not enough timber to use with them.

“It’s not _fair_ ,” she grumbled, not very seriously. “I should be getting more wood than you. My numbers are supposed to be better.”

I shook my head. “Your individual numbers are better, but my combination is better. Wood on sixes and clay on eights, each of those comes up five times in thirty-six, but not together. So you need to get both those numbers, and when your wood comes up, you need to hang onto it and stop me from stealing it before you get the clay you need with it. Me, wood and clay both on nines, they only come up four times in thirty-six, but when they come up they come up together and I can spend them together right away. So in the long run, you’ll get more production, but I’ll hang on to more of mine and get to spend it sooner.”

“Oh! Now I see.” She beamed—Anjali was the sort who would happily lose a game for one iota of knowledge—and then pursed her lips. “So if I want to trade for wood…”

“You have to hand in four cards all of one kind to the bank.”

“Even if I’m trading with you?”

“Oh no, if you’re trading with _me_ then we can trade any resources we agree to. But with two players, people don’t usually trade, because anything that helps you is going to hurt me…”

“So you won’t help me?”

“Well, what are you offering?”

Anjali held up a card, waggling it. “What about a lovely sheep? And all you have to give me is a boring old log.”

“One for one? I don’t think so. I’ll give you a wood for _two_ sheep. I know you have two. Or a sheep and another card.”

“I can’t spare the others. All I can give is one sheep. A lovely plump delicious sheep with the softest wool you ever did see.”

“That’s very sad for you, then,” I said. “No deal.”

Something brushed my ankle under the table. “One sheep and… I would be very grateful?”

“Oh? Just how grateful?” It was already warm inside, but her stockinged toes were tickling my calf and that was a different kind of heat altogether.

“Well…” Lily bit her lip, in a deeply distracting way that I suspected she might have practiced in front of a mirror. “A kiss, later tonight?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m _already_ getting kissed by a beautiful woman later tonight.”

She made a face. “Spoilsport.” Then she sat forward and looked to either side before settling back into the depths of her armchair. “Perhaps something more immediate?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“You tell me, Miriam. You’re the boss. But I’m relying on you to keep a lookout.”

I could feel myself blushing like a teenager as I checked the angles. Her chair was large enough to hide a lot from anybody behind her, so unless anybody was to peek at us from behind the scenery display we should be able to get away with a certain amount.

Besides, I had not forgotten that one of the options on our to-do list—the list which had been intended as a challenge to Lily, but had ended up becoming just as much a challenge for myself—was “in public”.

“Give me your foot, dear.”

“For a timber?”

“Your foot, and a sheep.”

She grinned, and handed over a card, and as I gave her mine in return I felt her toes again, stroking my knee. Had I known how things were going to turn out today, I’d definitely have worn a skirt. As it was, I’d have to make do in jeans.

I reached down and caught her foot between my fingers, gave her an affectionate squeeze, and then stroked her just lightly enough to make her squirm, just on the very edge of tickling. Her eyes rolled back and I teased her foot for a minute or two before I said, “It’s still your turn.”

“Oh!” She collected herself, checked over her cards, and laid them down. “That’s a settlement.”

“It is. Purchased through questionable means, but nonetheless a settlement for that.”

Lily placed her little wooden token on the board and then passed the dice. I needed both hands for my turn, so I positioned her foot between my thighs and clamped it there. She had the good manners to go on wriggling her toes while I rolled the dice and collected my cards. The combination of thick denim and an awkward position put limits on what she was going to be able to do for me from there, but it was at the least a pleasant sensation, warm and snug.

Play continued. As soon as I sold Anjali my wood, of course her luck changed and she began producing a timber surplus. I built up my road network and expanded while she focussed on upgrading the settlements she’d already placed. For that she’d need wheat, which was in short supply.

“I don’t suppose I can… persuade… you to part with some?” she asked me.

“I don’t have any,” I replied. “I’d be open to persuasion, but you need to roll my wheat numbers first.”

“I suppose I’ll be saving up, then.”

After trading a fistful of wood for a wheat card, she was on the verge of cashing in sheep for the other when disaster struck. “Seven, that’s the robber,” I said. “You need to discard five…”

“Nooo! I was so close!” Reluctantly, she handed in the resources she’d amassed over several turns of frugality. “Goodbye, little sheep. And you. And you, I’ll miss you most of all, Mr. Fluffy.”

“‘Mr. Fluffy?’”

“Shut up, I’m grieving here.” She kissed the card, laid it down with the other two, and then discarded two wood. “There. Happy now? You’ve _ruined_ me.”

“Not quite. Now I get to put the robber on one of your hexes and steal a card from you.”

I parked the robber on her wheat fields and she held up what remained of her hand. I reached for a card at random, but as I began to pull it free her grip tightened.

“No, not that one! You _can’t_ take that one. It took me so long to save up for that… please please pick a different one.” Wheat, then.

“But I’m the robber. I’m supposed to be awful to you. It’s my job.”

“Can’t you find some other way?”

“Hmm.” I looked her over. She had a light skirt on, and a summery blouse with a hint of décolletage. “All right, then.” I leant forward, squeezing her foot that much tighter, and gave her my best dastardly grin. “Let’s undo that top button, shall we? Actually, make it the top two.”

“And you’ll pick a different card?”

“Deal.”

Lily complied. The hint of décolletage became rather more than a hint, now framed at the edges by navy-blue lace. I took a little while to appreciate the view before I nodded, and picked a different card. Iron ore.

She’d made a good bargain. Losing the ore was far less of a blow to her than the wheat would have been, and in a few turns’ time she was able to cash in most of her hand to upgrade the settlement of Ganymedeville to majestic Zeusopolis.

(In all the time Ed and I had played together, it had never occurred to either of us to name our settlements, but Anjali seemed to consider it the obvious thing to do, and I found it delightful.)

Meanwhile I continued along my way, a road here, another nameless settlement there…

“Hey Lily, do you have a metal? I can trade you wheat for it.”

“How much wheat?”

“Two?”

“Agreed.”

We made the deal, and before she had re-sorted her hand I slapped down another card. “Monopoly. You have to give me all your wheat.”

“What? But you just traded me that!”

“I did. Now I’m stealing it back.”

“Ed was right. You really are an insufferable… witch.” She handed over the cards I’d just given her, plus another one she’d been hoarding.

“That’s ‘insufferable witch _ma’am_ ’ to you.” I promoted one of my settlements to a city, most of it paid for by the cards I’d just traded and stolen from her. “I suppose I should name this one. Let’s call it… Minas Morgul.”

“Wow, and people call _me_ a nerd.”

“You _are_ a nerd.” I passed the dice; she rolled and frowned.

“Oh great and mighty Witch-Queen, ma’am, I don’t suppose you want to trade me back that last wheat you just stole?”

“For what?”

“Mr. Fluffy?” She waggled a sheep at me, and wriggled her toes in an enjoyable manner.

I looked off to the side, checking that there was nobody waiting behind the scenery. “Pinch yourself,” I said quietly.

“Excuse me?”

“I want to see you pinch your nipple.”

“You—” She stalled. “Very well, if that’s the deal.” She sat back in her armchair, shielding herself from prying eyes with its bulk, and closed her hand over her breast—

“No. Under your bra.” She hesitated, and I spoke more gently. “I’m watching out.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath, and another, and slipped her hand in under the lace. I saw the bulge of her fingers under the blouse.

“Hard. I’ll tell you when you can stop.”

Her eyes half-closed, lost somewhere in the complicated territory between anguish and bliss. There was subtle movement in there, and I knew she was rolling her nipple between thumb and finger. I counted ten in my head, and then I said, “Now the other side. Wouldn’t want things to be asymmetric.”

She nodded, and laid her cards face-down on the table to switch hands.

“As hard as you can bear,” I said conversationally.

She gulped, and obeyed. Over the background hum of the place, I could just hear her sucking in breath as her face scrunched in pain. This time I counted a little slower, squeezing my thighs against her foot, and when I’d reached ten again I stroked her ankle. “Very good. We have a deal.”

 _Next time_ , I thought, _I should bring some of those little clips along._

Not long after that she noticed the trap I’d set for her. She’d been focusing on a small patch on the board, building up her cities on the best land—Zeusopolis now joined by Saturnia and Neptunus. Meanwhile I’d been creeping outwards, sowing humble little settlements on poorer land. She was ahead of me on points, but…

“You’ve surrounded me. How am I supposed to get to ten points now?”

“That is a problem, isn’t it? But there’s still one spot you can build, if you get to it before I do.” I pointed at a spot at the edge of the map, where the desert met the sea. “It’s a terrible location but it’s still a point, two if you upgrade it, and then you only have to scrape two more together from soldiers or specials.”

“I suppose. _If_ you let me get to it.”

I nodded. I probably could block her, if I put my mind to it, and then slowly build up to ten points with my holdings on the rest of the board. But it would be a very dull endgame for her; I know several people who enjoy being helpless and immobile in the right circumstances, but not in board games. Besides, I had the advantage of having played this one before, and she’d done very well for a first time, even with our unconventional incentive scheme. It seemed only fair to give her a sporting chance.

“Want to make this fun?” I asked.

“Fun for me, or fun for you?”

“Bit of both, really. Do you think you can play one-handed?”

“Oh, you don’t mean—”

“I do.” I leant forwards once more so I could lower my voice, although I probably needn’t have worried; two tables up, a rather theatrical roleplaying group was getting into their stride, with a couple of orcs arguing about poetic forms. “You’re going to frig yourself, and as long as you’re going, I won’t block you there.”

“Okay, that seems—”

“But in return you can’t build there yourself until you’ve come.”

“Sarah! I mean, Miriam, there’s a lot of people here!”

“Yeah, you’ll need to be quiet and not let your shoulders move too much. Just imagine you’re sharing a hotel room with your parents and trying not to get caught.”

“Least. Erotic. Imagery. Ever.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage.”

“Uh, okay.” She licked her lips, and then swapped her cards to her left hand, and the right vanished under the table. I imagined a rustle of fabric, and then I saw her arm begin to tense and relax rhythmically, just a slight movement that I’d never have noticed if I wasn’t looking for it.

“Your roll, by the way.”

She laid her cards down yet again so she could handle the dice, and play continued.

It wasn’t _really_ fair, of course. She was obviously distracted, not just by the working of her fingers but also by trying to manage the cards and dice and game pieces with her off-hand. But then, I was also distracted by her predicament. I couldn’t see what was going on under the table—it was too low and too wide for that—but her face was quite a picture show, and I took pleasure in prodding her any time she was taking too long about her turn.

Every so often she’d give a little shudder, or bite on her lip, and then I’d bring things back to the game, offering trades that weren’t worth her while to take, or asking her what had just been rolled as if I didn’t remember. The longer it took her, the more time I had to build up my own holdings, and the harder it would be for her to keep ahead of me. As we passed the dice back and forth, I watched her hand build up and watched the heat building in her face. I was pretty sure she had enough to saved up to build her expansion, just as soon as she was allowed to, and with all the time I’d enjoyed in her company I knew her tells: she was rapidly approaching the point of no return. Her eyes were beginning to close again, and she’d put her cards down so she could surreptitiously tweak her nipples again—

“So _do_ you do this, when you’re staying with your parents?”

Her eyes flew open, and the movement of her arm stopped, and she gave me a blood-curdling look. “Sarah, has anybody ever told you you’re just _evil_?”

“Now and then, yes, but I never get tired of hearing it. Maybe you can tell me again, later tonight, while you’re down between my knees. Have I told you how sexy you are when you’re all muffled?”

She mouthed her reply, but it wasn’t hard to lip-read.

“ _Really._ Such language.”

“Not… listening.” She shook her head, screwed her eyes closed, resumed. I could see the tension building in her frame, a blush creeping into her face. She was tweaking her nipples again, with only the armchair to shield her from perhaps thirty pairs of eyes, and I could tell it was taking her a great deal of effort to keep from moaning. I made out the shape of her fingers twisting under her blouse again, and then her hand flew up to cover her mouth, and she rocked forward, shuddering, gasping, as quietly as she could manage.

Punky Hairdo happened to be standing two tables over at the time, chatting with the role-players, and she must have noticed the movement. She turned our way, raising an eyebrow. “Everything okay?”

“Oh yes,” I said, “my friend was just… laughing. Long story.”

“Okay!”

Punky Hairdo turned her attention back to the role-players, and Lily slowly sat back in the chair with a beatific smirk on her face. She extricated her right hand from its hiding place, raised it to her mouth, and voluptuously licked her fingers at me.

“Well,” she said, smacking her lips, “I do believe I’ll be building that expansion now. Wood, sheep, clay, wheat, it’s all there.” And she reached for her cards, but I held up my hand.

“That’s lovely,” I said, “but you can’t do it yet.”

“But why not? You said, when I came—”

“And you did, and I very much enjoyed watching you. But right now it happens to be _my_ turn, and since you’ve stopped, that means I can do this…”

I laid down my cards, wood, sheep, clay, wheat, and placed my settlement on the desert coast, in the spot she’d been about to build, the only place she could build. “And with the road bonus, I believe that’s my ten points.”

Her glare was withering. “…I hate you SO MUCH. Well, I know what not to do next time.”

“So there’s a next time?”

“How else am I going to get my revenge?”


	11. Lucy's Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah and Anjali attend Lucy's birthday party, where Anjali gets squiffy and some questionable decisions are made.

After our adventures at the board-games shop, I was more than a little hot and bothered. We trammed back to my place. As soon as the door closed behind Lily, I pounced.

“Gotcha!”

“Eek!” She wriggled within my clutches.

“To the victor go the spoils.”

“And what is the victor’s pleasure tonight?”

I buried my face in her hair. “You smell nice, have I told you that?” And I nuzzled at her neck, and felt her melt a little in my arms. “I want to devour you slowly. Come on, upstairs.”

I was in a smoochy mood and it took us a while to get to the bedroom because I kept stopping to kiss her and run my hands through her hair, but eventually we tumbled onto my bed and rolled around for a while just snogging, neither of us looking to rush things. A little nibbling, a little stroking, a lot of cuddling.

Throats are pretty, and I’d tipped her head back so I could graze on hers, my lips brushing along her jawline, down her neck, tickling softly at her collarbone. I ran a fingertip down over her blouse and whispered, “You never did button these back up again.”

Lily felt for the buttonholes. “Oh shit! I didn’t. Well, I suppose anybody on the tram got an eyeful.”

“Such language! I must be rubbing off on you.”

She giggled. “Is that what you call it?”

I was working on the remaining buttons when a burst of music rang out from her handbag.

“Sorry, it’s my parents, okay if I—?” I nodded, and she scrambled for it. “Hi Mama! How are you?” She was frantically re-buttoning her blouse with one hand, turning to check herself in the mirror as she spoke. “Hang on, let me see if I can get the picture working.” A moment longer to straighten her collar and tidy her hair, and then she stood up straight and her face shifted into a smile of questionable authenticity as she held the phone up to point at her face. “Hi Papa! Yes, I can see you both! Me? Oh, not much, just hanging out with Sarah.” From there she switched into Hindi. By the tone of her voice and occasional apologetic glances in my direction, I got the impression this wasn’t going to be a quick call.

After a few minutes I thought I’d make things more interesting, and began to creep along the floor towards her with designs on her ankles. But she gestured an emphatic _no_ and I backed off, sitting back on the bed and amusing myself with my phone.

Anjali sounded defensive—she usually did when talking to her parents—and by the sound of it they were doing most of the talking. Most of her responses were just “ha… ma” and “nahi… ma”, which I was pretty sure meant “yes, mum” and “no, mum”, although there was a bit in there about Professor Cheng and something about Aldi’s. Now and then she mentioned my name, which I assumed was her trying to tell her mother that she had to go, but it was a good quarter-hour before she managed to extricate herself from the call and fell back on the bed beside me.

“So sorry about that. She doesn’t take a hint easily.”

“It’s okay. By the way, is that a new phone?”

“It is. I missed a couple of calls from them because the battery in my old one was dying, so they sent me this one as a gift a couple of weeks ago.”

“That’s nice, I guess?

“It is, but…” She slipped into mimicry of her father’s voice. “‘Anjali, we called you three times last night but you did not answer, is there a problem with the new phone?’”

“Oh, right. One of _those_ gifts.”

She nodded, and held her hands up— _what can you do?_ “At least they’re speaking to me. It was touch and go for a while there.” After their initial panic when their daughter disappeared, they had shifted quickly to fury when they found she’d walked out and gone back to Melbourne, and it had taken all Anjali’s diplomacy to establish some kind of truce. “Anyway, I think you had something much more enjoyable in mind than talking about my parents?”

I bent over and kissed her, slow and deep, and gradually I felt her relax and her hands came up to cradle my head. “You’re getting good at that,” I whispered, and she chuckled.

“Practice makes perfect.”

I kissed her forehead, then I trailed down to her chin, and she mewled as I nibbled at her throat, her nails prickling my scalp. It had been a warm day, and she tasted just slightly of salt. Pausing at her throat, I reached up to stroke her shoulder, running my fingers down over the sensitive spot at the inside of the elbow, down to her wrist.

She made a soft little sigh. “You’re going to make some girl very happy.”

I went on caressing her until she started to giggle. “Ticklish now!” Then I nuzzled my way down to her neckline, easing her buttons free, continuing down to her navel, letting the pressure of her hands in my hair tell me just how to touch her. My hands were at her calves now, sliding up to her knees, and she drew her legs up as I stroked them, making it easier for me to slip my fingers inside, stroking at the back of her knees—ticklish again—and her thighs, and the insides of her thighs, and her nails pricked my scalp.

She squirmed as my fingertips wandered further up, up to the edge of her panties, tickling, and then inwards to graze over the gusset. She was warm, and I could just feel the dampness of her developing arousal, perhaps mixed with that of several hours before. As I made contact she flinched, and then pressed her hips up against my fingers.

I’d played with her often enough to know the kind of pressure she liked, and I gave her about half of that, enough to tantalise without fully satisfying, and she whimpered and squirmed until I took pity on her. Tugging the gusset aside, I found her labia and stroked them and eased them open, working up to the little nubbin that made her wriggle so delightfully.

Without ever relinquishing my finger-hold, I rolled back and slid up the bed to be level with her. “I think you can take that bra off now,” I told her, and she acquiesced, and I rolled back to take her nipple in my mouth as I circled her clit more firmly, eliciting a sudden gasp.

“Don’t stop,” she added, “that’s lovely.”

I obliged, settling into a rhythm that I knew she loved, with just a hint of tease to keep her working to grind against my fingers. Gradually they slipped down, and pressed between her thighs, and entered her. I swirled and twisted them inside her—she groaned—and then I withdrew them, sliding back up to spread her moisture to her clit.

“Mmm. Yes, Miriam…”

Sitting back, I unzipped her skirt, tugged it down off her hips—she arched to help me—and tossed it to the floor behind me. Then I took her foot in my hands, raised it and kissed the tops of her toes, began to nuzzle my way back upwards. By the time my cheek brushed against her curls, by the time my fingers slid back inside her and my tongue-tip began to play against the bottom margin of her clit, she was already breathing hard in anticipation. I curled my fingers to stroke the spot I knew she loved, lavished attention on her with flickering tongue and eager lips, as her fingers found my hair again and urged me closer. I felt her muscles tense, I heard her breath come faster in little gasps… and when she was almost there, I pulled back.

“Oh, Miriammmm…”

“Patience, darling.”

I sat up, shed my jeans, went for my drawer. It had been a while since I’d used my harness, so she didn’t immediately know what I was after, but when I took it out she smiled and licked her lips. “Somebody wants to ride me.”

“Somebody does.”

After the obligatory faffing around with straps, I approached her. As I drew near she reached for the dildo, held the tip, pressed her lips to it and slowly took it into her mouth. That was new for us. I stroked her cheek as she pressed forward—looking up to me for the approval I was only too happy to give her—and bobbing, pressing the base very pleasantly against me.

“Good girl,” I said. I ran my finger over her lips as I eased out of her mouth and lay back on the bed. “Now how about you climb aboard?”

Lily grinned, straddling me, rubbing herself against the shaft before I reached down to position it against her. Then she bore down onto it, eyes half-closing as the silicone slid into her. Once she’d settled and made herself comfortable with its bulk, she started to rock, grinding her hips in circles, and I reached up: one hand caressing her torso possessively, nipples and breasts and belly and hips, and the other lower down to tease at her clit once more.

While fetching the harness I’d put my glasses back on, and so I could see the ripples of pleasure on her face as she moved, the slight flush that came with her arousal. Then I reached back behind me and pushed myself up so that we were sitting face to face, clasped in one another’s arms, moving rhythmically in slow shared enjoyment. I squeezed her close against me and nuzzled her ear, and she went limp like a scruffed kitten.

We rode together like that for some time. Neither of us were quite getting off, but it felt delicious—not just the carnality but the closeness—and we might have gone much longer that way, if it hadn’t been for a sudden growl from my stomach, loud and long, that had both of us falling over in giggles.

“Oh yeah, we never did have dinner,” I said.

“Or lunch,” added Anjali.

I reached for my phone and we ordered delivery, then reassembled with a new challenge: to get there before the delivery guy did. We were halfway successful: I lay back, Lily straddled me again, and I used my fingers on her frenetically until she came in a series of muffled yelps and then sprawled out on me once again. That’s when the buzzer rang, and I sent Anjali to the door wearing a borrowed dressing gown that was much too long for her, because the catches on the harness were fiddly and I didn’t want to startle the poor guy.

“So, I guess we ticked off ‘public’,” I said as we ate. “What did you think?”

She gestured _mouth full_ , and I waited until she could talk. “Not what I’d expected. I’d been thinking of, I don’t know, something like a club situation? Not secretly in a normal place. It was fun, but I don’t like the idea of making people uncomfortable if they notice. And if we’re going to go there again, for games, I don’t want to get thrown out. So I’m going to say, fun but wouldn’t do that again the same way.”

I nodded. “Fair enough. For what it’s worth, I was keeping a good eye out to make sure nobody could see, but yeah, I get you. And I want to be clear, you’re always allowed to safeword if I’m doing something you’re not comfortable with.”

“I know. I wasn’t sure whether to… sometimes one don’t really know where one’s limits were until after one’s passed them. Chalk it up to experience. Anyway, no harm done. I had a delightful afternoon, and I’d love to try some of the other games, if you want to do that as a replacement for trivia.”

“Splendid. I’ll let Lucy know. Now, after dinner, I believe you owe me…”

She smirked, then stuck out her tongue at me and waggled it.

* * * * *

Games Pixie was a smash hit with Lucy. From the moment she saw the selection she was like a kid in a candy store—as, let’s be honest, was I—and although the games were a little different to those she’d been used to, she was a quick study. The three of us spent a solid evening trying out new games, hammering one another back and forth for hours until at ten-thirty Punky Hairdo, aka Shaz, regretfully informed us that it was half an hour to closing time.

We finished up the card game we’d been playing—I hitched Lizzie Bennett to Mr. Bingley, leaving Lucy’s Jane stranded at the altar while Anjali’s Lydia eloped with Mr. Darcy in a match of unprecedented incompatibility—and repaired to an ice-cream parlour nearby for post-game dessert.

“So, what did you think?” I asked Lucy in between mouthfuls of mango sorbet.

“Excellent. Would do again.”

“Thursday nights good?”

“Absolutely.” She turned to Anjali. “And you?”

“Same as before,” Anjali said. “I can’t come very often, there’s so much to do with my thesis project. But I’ll try to make it once a month.”

“Sounds good,” said Lucy. “Maybe I’ll get some of the guys from trivia to join us.”

But in this she was unsuccessful. The next couple of weeks it was just Lucy and myself. I didn’t mind that, but it limited our choice of games; although there were still plenty we could play, a lot of the ones I was interested in required at least three players. After the second or third time of me looking hopefully at a game box and then being disappointed by the player requirements, Lucy did something that I can only describe as dark sorcery:

“You really want to play this one, don’t you?”

“Crushing the Old World under a tide of chaos sounds like just the ticket today.” It had been a rough week for me, as Lucy knew. Our storage and retrieval system for the Schiphol project was about to go live; I’d been pulling some late nights stomping out the last few bugs in the system and coordinating my minions to get the documentation finalised, and grumbling to Lucy about it on our breaks. “Oh well, maybe another time,” I added, but Lucy was already in motion.

“Okay then!” She stood up and before I could stop her she called out, “Hey everybody! My friend really wants to try this one”—she waved the box—“and we need another player or two. Anybody want to join us?”

Of course I understand that it’s possible to call the attention of complete strangers and ask them for things, in the same sort of way it’s possible to strip naked and jog around the floor until somebody calls the cops, but the idea of actually _doing_ it hadn’t even occurred to me. Part of me wanted to vanish into the chair, horrified by being the centre of attention, and for a flash I resented Lucy for putting me in that position. But then…

“Sure, we’ll play!” said a twenty-something guy with his partner in tow.

Two hours later, the Old World lay in ruins and Lucy and I had murdered, tainted, tricked, and corrupted our way into a friendly rapport with our new acquaintances Jeff and Kay. “We’re here every week,” Jeff said, and Kay added “Usually we have a bigger group, but people have assignments due.”

Afterwards Lucy told me, “I would have had you if you didn’t keep running away.”

“Yeah, that was why I kept running away. Not about to feed my precious little cultists to the Lord of War.” She chuckled, and I went on, “It’s about tempo. When you blort your big guys onto the board right away, you run out of power too early and then I can just get out of your way and go do my own thing in peace.”

“Yeah, I worked that out a couple of turns in, but it was a bit late by then. Next time, Sarah.” She shook her fist in mock anger. “Next time!”

There were quite a few next times. Jeff and Kay’s friends showed up the following week; most of them were a few years younger than me and Lucy, but they didn’t seem to mind that. They introduced us to some new games, and here and there I was able to do the same for them. When Anjali showed up a couple of weeks later, they brought her into it as well. They had a couple of players who didn’t like to compete, and so only played cooperative games; Anjali mostly gravitated to the cooperative group while Lucy and I embraced more warlike pastimes, but we crossed over often enough.

At one point, during a particularly cut-throat round of Terraforming Mars, Lucy paused and said, “It’s fascinating watching the two of you play.”

“Oh? How so?” I asked.

“Such different playing styles. Anjali plans out the cost of everything. End of Turn 3, she was perfectly positioned to play everything in her hand on Turn 4, with exactly enough money to afford it. And I’m pretty sure you’re keeping track of what’s still in the deck.”

Anjali nodded. A smile touched the corners of her mouth.

“And Sarah,” Lucy continued, “you’re always thinking about the timing. You always know when you want to play fast so you can grab territory before we get in the way, like that titanium mine, and when you want to play slow to force us to commit ourselves before you block our forests. I saw you keep cards in hand and forego income on Turn 2 so you could have a killer turn next go and grab both the temperature bonuses.”

“You have me there, though that was also about keeping my options open. So what’s _your_ style, Lucy?”

Now it was her turn to smile. “Why, try to figure out what the two of you are up to, and then plan against that—” She trailed off, looking towards the front of the store. “Hold that thought a moment. Just want to get a shot of something in the display.”

Before I could point out that it was her turn and it would only take her a moment, she’d picked up her phone and gone over to take a couple of snaps of the new games in the window before coming back to the table.

“So, you were saying?” I prompted.

“I was? Uh… sorry, forgot. Never mind.”

By then we’d gone through a lot of the games in the library, and I’d spent enough time browsing the shelves to notice several more interesting-looking games that weren’t in the library. I ended up buying a couple for myself, ostensibly for my own collection, in truth mostly to play with Anjali and Lucy and our new-found friends.

A couple, did I say? Well, two or three. Four perhaps? Half a dozen at most, not much more than that.

Don’t judge me.

Work continued unabated—the Schiphol project was going into final testing—but I was feeling mellow, and it wasn’t just the retail therapy. Aside from Anjali and more recently Lucy, it had been a long time since I’d had a regular circle of friends to hang out with, and although I’m an introvert I still enjoy spending time with my people (nerds, that is) now and then. I’d forgotten how good it could be.

I’d love to write more about them, but this story is long enough and complex enough already. Maybe I’ll write about them some other time. For now, let’s just say that we clicked, and so when Lucy threw a birthday party it seemed only natural that she should invite the games group.

* * * * *

Every game has some kind of rule to decide who goes first. When I was a kid it was usually the youngest player, or chosen at random. But for some games it’s the tallest player, or the one who’s last been to an island, or who last caught a cold. And for some…

“First player is…” Lucy peered at the rules. “…whoever last went on a date.”

“Last Saturday,” I said without thinking, just as Anjali also said “Last Saturday” and Jeff said “Sunday”. Realising my blunder, I glanced over to Lucy. She looked to be thinking a moment before she said “2015”.

Lucy was housesitting for an uncle and aunt who’d decided to spend a season in Europe, as one does when one has way too much money for one’s own good. Since her return from London more than a year earlier she’d been bouncing around from one unsatisfactory rental to another, and so she’d leapt at the chance of a few months rent-free in their McMansion. “Besides,” she’d said, “it comes with cats.” Not to mention four bedrooms, and a wine cellar, and a pool table, and a fireplace clad in white marble.

We’d arrived early, as had Jeff and Kay, so we were playing the new game they’d gifted Lucy while we waited for the rest to arrive. The aforementioned cats—a tabby named Egory and a tortie named Astrophe—had sniffed at me and Anjali briefly when we’d arrived, and then made themselves scarce.

Trev and his wife Jacinta arrived halfway through the game bearing booze, followed soon after by Jerry and Davie—mutuals of Trev and Lucy, I hadn’t met them before—and then Seungmin, another of our gaming buddies, and some other Lucy-friends who I didn’t know. For the size of the place it wasn’t a large party, maybe a dozen people in a lounge room that could easily have held twice that number, and I remembered that Lucy had mentioned having to rebuild her social circle after her time overseas.

Having finished our game, I helped set the fire and then drifted to the kitchen to help Lucy with chopping carrots and celery sticks. The bell rang again a few minutes later: a redheaded woman, and behind her a lady in a headscarf. They stood on the doorstep, and from overheard snatches of conversation I gathered that they’d just dropped by to say a quick happy-birthday on their way to somewhere else. “…bad timing, sorry… no, quite okay… thanks for coming… very best wishes to you both.”

Then Lucy came back and called to Jerry and Davie: “Hey, Pippa says if you want a lift over to their thing, they have room.”

“Yeah, we probably should,” said Jerry. “Sorry to bail on you so early, but we don’t have a car.”

“It’s okay,” Lucy said. She headed out with them and came back inside a few minutes later. She seemed a trifle distracted, and it was a little while before she spoke again. “I fucked up my scheduling. One of my exes is getting hand fasted next week so a lot of people are going to the hens’ night. That was another of my exes and her partner, dropping by on their way to the bash. It might be a quiet evening here tonight.”

“I don’t mind quiet.” I gave her a quick pat on the shoulder; it seemed like a supportive kind of thing to do. “All okay?”

“Oh yeah. It’s been a few years and we’re on good terms. And her girlfriend is lovely. Just bad timing. Oh well, guess it makes it easier to fit people in the tub.”

“The… tub?”

“Yeah. Hot tub in the garden.”

“Oh! I didn’t realise, I haven’t brought my togs.”

“Shit, sorry, I didn’t even think to mention it. I don’t usually worry about a costume among friends, but… whatever you’re comfortable with. My cousin’s about your size, I can probably find something of hers to fit you.”

In the end, my discomfort with the idea of borrowing a costume from somebody who wasn’t present to give their permission won out over my discomfort with the idea of bathing nude. The vibe felt friendly enough, nobody else was bothering with clothes, and nobody was being creepy about it. So I ditched my clothes on a bench just out of splash range and climbed in.

There was only one thing I felt self-conscious about. Among friends, I don’t much care who sees my tits or bush while I’m bathing. They’re just body parts, most people have them in one variation or another. But my tattoo, now, that’s _personal_ , and I feel more exposed showing that than all the rest of me. Fortunately it’s small enough that I could more or less cover it by positioning my arm over my chest, until I was able to sink down into the steaming hot water and take cover in the bubbles that were rumbling all around us.

Anjali followed my lead, undressing by the bench, and she was mostly out of her clothes when her phone rang. It was the tone she kept for her parents, and she answered it with the same exasperated attitude as before. Lots of “ha, ma” and “nahi, ma” while she explained that yes, she was at a party with me and friends, no she wasn’t drinking and anyway Sarah was there, and so on and so on until she finally managed to end the call.

“That’s it, you’re going on silent,” she said to the phone. “Eugh, I’m cold!” She stashed her things next to mine and climbed in next to me, moving cautiously on the tub’s edge; without her glasses she was extremely short-sighted, and I extended my hand to help her down.

“Drinks, anybody?” asked Trev. He’d dragged an esky out to the side of the tub.

“What is there?” somebody asked.

“Corona… VB… soft lemonade… soft ginger beer… water, soju. Hey, Seungmin, is the soju to share?”

“Yeah,” said Seungmin. “I’m not going to drink it all.”

“What’s soju?” asked Anjali.

“Korean drink,” they replied. “Fruity. I brought, let me see, apple, peach, plum.”

“That sounds nice,” Anjali said. “Could I have plum, please?”

“No worries.” Trev popped the lid off and passed her a bottle. She looked at the label and nodded.

“One-point-six standard drinks,” she said to me. “That should be fine. Told Mama I wasn’t drinking, didn’t say I wasn’t going to.”

“Fair enough.” I took a ginger beer. I’m not a big drinker, and past history left me feeling a little protective of Anjali where alcohol was involved. But this was a world away from rapey teenagers spiking drinks, and just for once I felt quite comfortable surrounded by mildly tipsy people.

Having made sure everybody was adequately beveraged, Trev joined us in the tub. Mrs. Kapadia probably wouldn’t have approved of the eyeful of Trev’s tackle that dangled in front of us before he sunk into the water like the rest of us. But then, she wasn’t invited.

“Everybody, if you’d like to raise your bottles… happy birthday Lucy!” said Trev. “One, two, three! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Luuu-cy! Happy birthday to you!”

We all sang along, and chinked our bottles, and drank to Lucy’s good health, and she toasted us in return. After that it dissolved into individual chit-chat, somewhat lubricated by the alcohol most people were consuming, and although I’d been staying off the booze I could feel the general ebullience rubbing off on me. Somebody put on music, a mix of Halestorm and The Pretty Reckless and that kind of thing, so we had to raise our voices a little to be heard.

I was in between Anjali and Seungmin, who turned out to know several of the same people I did. We were exchanging gossip, and perhaps shit-talking just a little, when it happened. One of those moments where a track ends just as everybody else momentarily stops talking, and one person continues speaking REALLY LOUD into what’s suddenly become an attentive hush.

On this occasion, that person was me, and the words I happened to be saying were “…no thanks, I wouldn’t do her with a rented dick.”

The silence deepened, and everybody looked at me, and I began to turn bright red.

“Do you _normally_ do people with a rented dick?” asked Anjali, who by then ought to have known very well that I didn’t. Traitorous wench.

“No, but—” I caught myself one syllable too late.

“No, _but_?” said Lucy.

“It wasn’t rented,” I said, which obviously wasn’t going to help me. “Just borrowed. And only the once. It was a bad idea.”

Everybody wanted details, but my brain had finally caught up with my mouth. “I’m going to stop talking now!” I announced brightly, and although everybody made disappointed noises, I held my silence until they found other things to talk about and the buzz of conversation resumed.

Maybe fifteen minutes later, Trev’s phone beeped. “That’s eight o’clock, I guess we’d better be heading,” he said. Jacinta stood alongside him, dangerously wobbly, and I heard a sudden shriek followed by unladylike swearing from the benches behind me. “Shorry!” she called out. “Saaa-rah, I knocked your shtuff over, don’t worry, all under control.”

“No worries,” I told her. Several of the others were getting out too, all headed for the hen’s night. When the exodus had tapered off there were only seven of us left: Lucy and me and Anjali, Jeff and Kay and Seungmin from the gaming group, and Eleanor, who was apparently an old uni classmate of Lucy’s.

Somebody asked Anjali about her studies, and she did her usual enthusiastic info-dump about neutron stars and her PhD.

“So how far along are you?” asked Kay.

“Little bit of modelling still to do, but I’ve started writing up!” said Anjali. “Expecting to submit my thesis in about nine months.”

“And what then?”

“Probably a postdoc. There’s a group in Switzerland I’m interested in.”

That was news to me. It shouldn’t have been, really. I was aware she was getting towards the pointy end of her doctorate—she’d been more and more busy with seminars and advisor meetings and so forth—and I knew she ought to be thinking about what might come next, but she hadn’t mentioned her plans post-PhD and I hadn’t asked her. I guess I’d grown comfortable with the way things were between us, and I didn’t really want to think about that being finite. Change is bad.

“Oh, you didn’t say!” I said, as brightly as I could manage.

“Sorry, I’ve been meaning to ask you about it!” she said. “I probably need to start learning some German and I was going to ask for pointers.”

“Hmm, well, I can help with Hochdeutsch. That’ll get you by in academia, if they’re not speaking English anyway. But Swiss German, now, that’s a bit different. I’ll see what I can find…”

“Are you German?” asked Seungmin.

“My father’s father,” I said. “Grandpa Weber was captured in North Africa, shipped out to Australia as a POW, met a local girl and ended up staying. But in school I used to tell people my parents came from Germany when I was four.”

I had persisted in that story for some months, until that fateful parent-teacher night when Mrs. Hartwell had congratulated my parents on their excellent English, which must have been a confusing experience for all involved. They had made me apologise to her—but not, thank god, to the rest of the class, which would probably have destroyed me.

At the time, I’d never been able to explain to them why I did it. In hindsight, I think it was my way of dealing with the sense of foreignness that I wouldn’t understand until many years later, the way I missed layers of meaning in my classmates’ speech. For a little while, by trilling my ‘r’s and over-pronouncing my ‘w’s the way I’d heard my Opa do, I had a way of packaging my alienness that made sense to my classmates and to me. It might not have been true, in a strict sort of sense, but it was a metaphor that helped me make sense of things until I was obliged to give it up.

I tuned back into the conversation just in time to hear Lucy replying to something Eleanor had asked her: “…no, somebody I’ve been kind of interested in, but I don’t think she’s interested in me. I’ve thrown out a few not very subtle hints and she’s ignored them so it’s time to take that as a very polite rebuff and move on. I don’t even know if she’s seeing someone.”

Perhaps I wasn’t meant to hear that—Lucy was talking quite quietly to Eleanor, while the others chatted about career stuff around me—but she sounded disappointed, and I wanted to cheer her up, so I butted in. “Some people really don’t get subtle, you know. Sometimes you just have to use your words or you don’t know.”

“Yeah, I thought I’d been pretty obvious with this one.”

“I mean, laugh at me if you like,” I said, “but back in undergrad I once failed to realise a girl was interested in me even when she was actually kissing me.”

“Wait, how is that possible? Do you mean like a kiss on the cheek?” Kay asked.

“No, full on…smoochy stuff,” I replied, although that didn’t really do the lady justice. “I just assumed she was in a kissing mood and felt like kissing somebody, and I happened to be nearby. Didn’t occur to me that she might have wanted to kiss me in particular.”

“ _Seriously_?” said Lucy.

“Yeah, and it can go the other way too—like, do you remember one night at trivia, you told me ‘nice boots’? Funny thing is, that’s a goth pickup line. The joke used to be ‘nice boots, wanna fuck?’ and then it just became ‘nice boots’ but everybody knew what it meant. So if I hadn’t known better, I might have thought you were coming on to me and that would have been really awkward.”

“Uh huh,” said Lucy, and Eleanor said, “Lu, I hate to be a party pooper, but I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow. Would you mind terribly if I—”

“No, that’s quite okay,” said Lucy.

Kay, having been whispering in Jeff’s ear, chimed in. “Jeff and I were going to head out shortly too. Seungmin, Anjali, do you need a lift anywhere?”

“Sure, yeah, that would be great,” said Seungmin, and Anjali said “No, thank you, I’m good.”

“You sure?” said Kay.

“Yes, thanks, I’m getting a ride back with Sarah later!” We’d made plans to share a cab.

“Okay,” said Lucy, “well, let me see you out.” Everybody else climbed out and dressed, and Lucy slipped her pinstripes back on and accompanied them, leaving just me and Anjali in the tub.

“Having fun?” asked Anjali.

“Yeah, but I hope Lucy is too. Seems like everybody’s leaving early.”

Anjali nodded. “That’s why I thought it’d be nice if we two shtayed.”

I noticed the slurring in her voice, and a thought occurred to me. “Hey, Anj, can I look at that bottle a moment?”

“Ab-absolutely! Have some if you like.”

She’d been sipping at the soju for the last half-hour, and the bottle was almost empty. I held it up under the light and looked closely at the label. “Ah… that’s not one-point-six standard drinks. It’s sixteen percent alcohol. That’s about, uh, four drinks.”

“Oh! Oh dear!” She shook her head. “Well, I’d better… drink some water?”

“That would probably be a good idea… no, you stay, I’ll get some.” I sloshed my way over to the esky and fetched her a large bottle. “I think I’ll turn into a prune if I get back in, gonna get dressed now. Also, want to check on Lucy, she’s been gone a while.”

Anjali followed me out, looking distinctly wobbly. “Careful,” I said, “you’re not allowed to fall over. I don’t want to explain it to your parents.” She giggled, and almost did take a tumble before I caught her. “Easy, I’ve got you.”

Out of the hot tub, it hadn’t gotten any warmer, and we dried ourselves as quickly as we could. Anjali’s blouse was too light for the season, and I offered her my bomber jacket, but she turned it down. “Let’s just get inside.”

When we came in, our host was sitting in a chair near the front door, holding another Corona and looking at it as if deciding whether she wanted to open it.

“Hey Lucy. Everything okay?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. Just chatting with Eleanor, she’s just left.”

“I guess it’s down to us to keep you entertained.”

She gave me a half-hearted smile. “I’m sure we’ll manage… Anjali, are _you_ okay?” I looked back to see Anjali hugging herself.

“Just had a little too m-much,” Anjali said. “And cold. Going to sit by the fire.”

“Oh, I’m sorry! Just a moment, let me get you something, dear. No guest of mine is going to freeze.” She hurried off to one of the bedrooms and returned with the fluffiest dressing gown I’d ever seen. “Try this.”

It was vastly too big for Anjali, but then she wasn’t going anywhere. So she sat on the lounge closest to the fire, hands and feet disappearing into a garment sized for a giant.

“Sorry, I hadn’t realised quite how big that would be on you. I can find you a blanket…”

“No, it’s fine!” Anjali laughed. “I feel like that girl in that movie, the one piloting the big robot.” She looked down at the insignia on the breast pocket. “Cunard?”

“Uncle Jeremy brought it back from a cruise. QE2, or maybe Queen Mary. One of those.”

I sat down on the sofa, at the other end from Anjali, and Lucy pulled up a chair opposite us. The fire was burning steadily, and I was once again very pleasantly warm. I’d been paying close attention to Anjali, alert for any signs that I might need to take her home, but she seemed to be mellow and happy enough chatting. She’d been sounding pretty stressed lately, between her ongoing family tensions and a lot of late nights in the lab, and I didn’t want to spoil her fun. Nor did I want to bring Lucy’s party to an end at barely nine o’clock on a Saturday night.

“Oh shit!” Lucy exclaimed suddenly. “I forgot the cake! I was going to serve it up after we got out of the tub, but people were leaving and… I clean forgot. Well, shall we have some now?”

We made no objections, and she bustled away, returning in a couple of minutes with three plates. “I should have asked, I hope you like Black Forest cake?”

The dressing-gown creature next to me spluttered and hunched over, giggling uncontrollably. “You could… you could say that!”

Lucy was looking at me now, as I tried not to smirk too much myself. “It’s an in-joke. Which we are not going to explain while Anjali’s under the influence.” _Nor when she’s sober,_ I silently added. “That would be lovely, thanks.”

We ate our cake, rather more tidily than the last time Black Forest had been on the menu, and in the middle of our chit-chat Anjali asked abruptly, “Lucy, what was it like working overseas? What made you go?”

I’d heard small pieces of this story before, but not the whole, so I listened attentively while Lucy spoke.

“I started out in family law. Divorce and custody, AVOs, restraining orders. I always knew that was what I wanted to do, and then I got there, and…look, if I’m going to tell this story, on my birthday, I’m _damn_ well going to have a brandy. Kirsch?”

I declined, as did Anjali, and I wondered just when I ought to remind Lucy that she was trying to cut down on her drinking. _Next time_ , I told myself.

Having poured herself a glass, Lucy returned to her armchair. She looked towards the fire, not at us, as she spoke. “So sometimes the thing you always wanted isn’t what you want. I wasn’t very good at letting go of work at the end of the day, and there were a couple of…bad cases. I developed some, shall we say, unhealthy coping mechanisms.” She tapped her glass. “Pippa, bless her soul, told me I was going to burn myself out if I kept going like I was, and she kept on badgering me until I listened. I felt like such a fucking sellout walking away from it.”

She’d emptied her glass already, and was staring down at it contemplatively. I was trying to figure out how best to say “perhaps you’ve had enough?” when she put it down on the table next to her with a sharp clink, and rose to her feet (not entirely steadily), and swayed over to the sofa.

“I’d like a hug, please,” she said, and Anjali and I scootched apart as she sat between us. I put an arm over Lucy’s shoulder, and Anjali wrapped hers around Lucy’s waist, and we squashed her between us until she was ready to continue.

“So, Pippa and some other people convinced me that I wasn’t actually going to help anybody if I burned myself out. Long story short, decided to go into business law, but it can be hard to break in without experience. Uncle Jeremy knew some people and he wangled me a job with P-K’s London office. I didn’t want to leave Pippa behind, but I needed to be doing _something_ and it was a great opportunity to get my break. But they wanted somebody to commit long-term, and Pippa wasn’t in a position to move, so, well.” I felt her leaning into me. “It wasn’t a very happy breakup. We’re on friendly terms now, but it took a while. And then I’d barely been over there a year when we got Brexited and things fell apart. They needed to cut back in the London office, last hired first fired, but I managed to get a spot back here with the Australian branch.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Anjali murmured. She was still hugging Lucy like one of those oversized teddy bears. “I didn’t mean to bring you down.”

“It’s okay,” Lucy said. “But I think now I get to ask you a question.”

“That seems fair,” said Anjali.

“Well, then. What _is_ the deal between you two?”

“She pays me,” said Anjali, just like that.

From the way Lucy jolted against me, that wasn’t the answer she’d been expecting. “Say what?”

“We have a sugar baby arrangement. Once a fortnight I do nice things for Sarah, and she pays me for it. The rest of the time, the games and trivia, that’s just as friends.”

“No, really, what _is_ the deal?” asked Lucy.

“Yeah, it’s true,” I said, embracing my doom.

Lucy sat back, turning her head to look at me, then back to Anjali. “Now you’re _both_ shitting me.”

“I bloody am not,” said Anjali, with an edge of genuine anger in her voice, and she pulled away from Lucy and stood up. “Sarah, where’s your bag?”

“Over by the—wait, what are you doing?” But I’d already pointed, and she’d found it and had opened up my wallet.

“Two hundred dollars,” she said, spreading out the notes so we could see them. Then she stashed them away in her own purse, and took out a familiar length of red silk.

“When I’m wearing this,” she said, draping it around her neck, “I’m Lily, and I’m at her beck and call.” She took a dramatic step towards us, and her foot caught in the hem of the gown and she went over with a squawk, face-first into a shag pile rug.

I rushed to her side: no damage done, except to her dignity. “You right?” I whispered.

“I _won’t_ be called a liar,” she said out loud, and then whispered back, “and this counts as challenge number three.”

“Fine then.” Fuck it. In for a penny, in for…two hundred dollars? And although I wasn’t sure this was actually on the list of challenges we’d discussed, it was definitely in the spirit of things. “Lily, if you can’t stay upright in that gown, you’d better take it off.”

“As you command, milady.” She rose to her feet like a sunflower fighting its way out from under a large and fluffy towel. When she’d reached her full height she twirled, shrugging her arms out of the robe so it fell back down around her as she twirled a full circle.

“Dance with me.” I had been about to say “for me”, but then I remembered her state of sobriety and thought about hard marble and glass coffee-tables too close for safety. She clasped one hand in mine, fingers twined together, and wound the other around my waist, and we swayed together in cautious circles. I leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Are you sure? You’ve had a bit to drink—”

“I’m not _that_ drunk,” she replied, perhaps louder than she intended. Then, to Lucy, “By now you really should have known I’m not one for bluffing.”

Lucy was still on the sofa, eyes comically wide, and I felt sorry for her. But then, she’d impugned my honesty too. So I just grinned in her direction and kissed my Lily, hungrily and deep.

We swayed together, and her hands came up behind me, stroking my back. Something in her style was bolder than I was used to, more aggressive, and I wasn’t sure how much of that was the alcohol and how much her annoyance at Lucy.

I stooped a little further and shifted her scarf to expose her neck, nibbled, bit. She yelped, and shuddered in my grasp, and melted against me as I maintained the pressure. Her thighs were very warm against mine. I gave her one last nip, extracting a little squeal, and then I pivoted behind her, arms coming up around her.

“Just let us know when you’ve seen enough,” I said to Lucy, and eased the top button of Lily’s blouse open, and then the next. She arched back against me, reaching up and backwards to ruffle my hair, and I continued to spin her very slowly as I worked my way down the line of buttons.

Lucy said nothing. Her face was bright red. I didn’t think it was from the alcohol.

Having reached the last of Lily’s buttons, I slid my hand inside, letting Lucy watch the shape of it under the silk, sliding up to cup her breast, while I kissed her earlobe and breathed slow and warm in her ear. “I. Fucking. Want. You.”

She almost purred at that, and then she twisted around in my arms and slipped down, out of my grasp, down to kneel at my feet. “Mistress, may I?” She reached for my shoes and I nodded assent, watching as she fumbled at the laces, tugged them undone, eased them off my feet. Then she pressed her cheek against my thigh, wrapped her arms around me.

I reached down, grasped her glasses at her temples, slid them off her face. “Miss Kapadia,” I said—we’d never given Lily a surname of her own—“you’re _beautiful!_ ” Then a mischievous thought struck me. “Lucy, would you take these, please?” I held the glasses out, and Lucy blinked, reached out, took them, set them down on the coffee table without ever looking away from the two of us.

“Thank you,” I said, but my attention was already back on Lily, whose hands were wandering up over my knees, tickling their way up my thighs, converging at the buckle of my belt. I closed my eyes, feeling the tension around my waist as she pulled on the end, then the release as she popped the tongue free and eased my slacks down to my ankles, leaving me standing in my Kmart boxers.

“What is your pleasure, mistress?” she said softly, and again I wondered if we might be taking this all too far, out of proportion to what little provocation Lucy had given us.

But Lily was kneeling in front of me, looking up with big eyes. For the first time that evening I noticed her dark purple lipstick, and that sent a little jolt of desire through me.

I hitched my thumbs in the elastic of my underwear, a sheriff reaching for her six-guns. “Let me see you stripped.”

We had all seen one another nude in the tub, less than an hour ago. More nude then than now, for she hadn’t been wearing the scarf before. But there is a considerable difference between _nude_ and _naked_. She never took her eyes off me as she slipped off the blouse, as she shed skirt and shoes and sports bra and briefs—her underwear was plainer than I was used to, and it took me a moment to remember that this time she was dressed as Anjali—and I never took my eyes off her, but I could feel the heat of Lucy’s gaze on us both.

“Come on, you.” I wound her hair around my hand and led her to the sofa. “And you”—that to Lucy—“budge over.”

Lucy squeezed back into the corner near the fire, and I lounged back across the armrest at the other end, my feet not quite touching her. I dragged Lily backwards into my lap, facing towards Lucy, and laid my right hand over Lily’s belly as my left stroked her ribs, slid up to tease at her breasts. My fingernails skittered over her soft skin, leaving ephemeral white traces, grazing over her nipples. I whispered a question in her ear, and she shivered, and whispered “Yes”.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” I asked Lucy.

“Yes… yes, she is.” Her mouth didn’t quite close when she finished speaking.

“When she’s wearing this scarf, she’s mine.” My right hand slid down, fingers curled to trail through her curls. “Do you want to see what happens next?”

Lucy’s eyes widened, and in my head I counted three before she slowly nodded. Then my hand slipped down between Lily’s thighs. She sighed, and brought her knees up, welcoming my fingertip as it dawdled over her labia, stroked and teased and opened her.

“You can touch her feet if you like,” I said, and Lucy reached out as if hypnotised, took one of Lily’s feet between her hands. Lily stretched out her leg—pressing my fingers tighter between her legs—and laid her foot in Lucy’s lap. I pinched her nipple softly, and she sighed again, purred as I rolled it between my fingertips.

My other hand was working rhythmically between Lily’s legs, circling her clit and running down and sliding back into her. It was making the tiniest of wet noises, but I knew Lucy could hear it. Her eyes were darting back and forth between my face, Lily’s face, and down where I was stroking Lily.

“Do you like that, darling?” I asked Lily.

“Mmm. I like it—oh, I like it a lot.”

I went on pinching her nipples, tormenting them until they stood firmly, and at the same time I continued to massage her sex. She was arching to press herself against my hand, and I knew Lucy, still cradling Lily’s foot, could feel second-hand the effect I was having on my paramour.

“Tell Lucy what you do for me.”

“Mmm…Lucy, she spanks me. She ties me up. She taught me to please her with my mouth and my tongue and my fingers. Oh. When I’m staying over, she has me wake her up by going down on her. Sarah likes to hurt me and—ah!—to make me cry out and she knows that gets me so hot.”

I paused. She whimpered. “Please?”

I slid two fingers into her, as deep as I could from my position behind her, and swirled them.

“Ugh! She, oh, she pulls my hair and leaves claw marks in my skin. And she makes me admit how much I love it. Oh, please Sarah, please…and she loves to tease me like this. Make me beg her to let me come. Please, Sarah.”

“Mmm.” I circled my finger over her clit, just firm enough to keep her in a state of hungry frustration. “Lucy, should I let her, do you think?”

“I…I…” Lucy seemed almost hypnotised by the sight of Lily, caught in my grasp, legs open, being driven slowly closer to climax.

“But what am I thinking? Where are my manners? It’s your birthday, Lucy. Would you like to try her? Just say what you want. She is _very_ good.”

Lucy swallowed, and closed her eyes a while. Then she shook her head abruptly and looked at me, and at Lily, and back to me, with a peculiar expression that was half smile and half frown. “That is one of the most lovely birthday presents I’ve ever been offered, certainly the most unexpected.” She leaned over, not quite touching my companion’s naked body, and kissed her on the cheek. “But this is…this is an awful lot to take in, and as lovely an offer as it is, I’m not sure it’s what I want right now. I’m not in the right headspace. I’m afraid I must decline, without prejudice. Sorry.”

She looked downwards—good lord but she was blushing!—and then back up to me, with a sudden grin. “I think you should give the poor girl some relief, though.”

“Well, then.”

Lucy sat back, watching, and I accelerated, jerking at Lily’s nubbin with the edge of my hand, tweaking her nipples to make her help, nuzzling at the bare skin behind her ear. She responded fast and hard, rutting her hips against me, hands down behind her gripping my thighs, arching and gasping until she came with a shriek, soaking my hand and my boxers. I drew it out, slowed, stopped, but she wasn’t done yet. She let go of my thigh, pushed my hand aside, and frantically rubbed herself to another climax before subsiding in my arms.

Time stretched out, and with the rush of lust now over I was suddenly very aware of how weird this whole moment was and how many lines I’d crossed that evening. I didn’t know what to say—it’s not the kind of moment I have a script for—and so I was profoundly grateful when Lucy coughed and broke the silence.

“I suppose the lesson for me in all this is to take the two of you at your word.”

“Huh,” I said eloquently, and Anjali added, “Yeah.”

“As a substitute present, though, perhaps you could tell me the story about the rented dick?”

“You sure? It’s not _that_ great a story.”

“Rented dick,” Anjali mumbled. She was all floppy in my arms. I supposed the alcohol was catching up with her.

“I’m not going to get any peace until I tell you, am I?”

“Nope,” said Lucy firmly.

“Fine. Okay. You asked.” I threw my hands up. “So, this was back when I was with Ed. You”—Anjali—“would have been, uh, about seventeen. Ed and I had an agreement that we could play with other people, if the opportunity came up. Mostly it was Ed, but one time…there was this lady, and there was a certain amount of chemistry, and one weekend while Edgar was off at a swim meet in Adelaide she made her interest clear to me in words of one syllable.”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Lucy.

“So. Extremely hot baby-butch lass, there in my bedroom, making me an offer I couldn’t refuse. She had some specific interests. But back then I didn’t own a strap-on of my own, it wasn’t a regular part of my, um, repertoire.”

“Uh huh.”

“So this was not long after Ed started transition. He had, uh, you know what hard and soft packers are?” Lucy nodded, but Anjali looked unsure, so I went on. “Wearable dick, basically a strap-on. The soft ones are just for wearing around, for having a bulge and the feeling of having a dick. The hard ones are for, well, when you want to use them on somebody.”

“Like we—” Anjali began.

“Yes, like that,” I replied before she could go any further. “So, not long before Ed started on T, he got himself one of each. But I’m told it’s poor form to show up at the poolside sporting a boner, so he left the hard one at home, and, um.”

“You borrowed it,” said Lucy.

“I borrowed it. Not something we’d talked about, but we used to borrow shirts and stuff from one another all the time, so I assumed it’d be okay.”

“You borrowed his dick for sex,” said Anjali, “without asking.”

“Yeah. That’s not the worst part.”

“What’s the worst part?” she asked, and Lucy said “Do go on.”

“We, uh. She was pretty enthusiastic and, uh, we sort of broke it.”

“You _broke_ Ed’s _dick_?” asked Anjali.

“Yeah. Not my best moment.”

“So _that’s_ why the two of you split up!” She was joking, but she wasn’t too drunk to notice my reaction. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“Well, it wasn’t a big part—”

“Rephrase!” chirped Anjali without a moment’s hesitation.

I glared at her. “AS I WAS SAYING, it wasn’t the end of the world, but we had a pretty big fight about it. I didn’t understand why he was so pissed about it. I thought I’d just buy him a new one, same make, same size, and that would fix it. I didn’t realise…”

“Dicks aren’t fungible?” said Lucy.

“Fungible?” I vaguely remembered hearing the term, but the only thing I could recall was that it wasn’t about fungus.

“It’s like ‘equivalent’,” said Anjali. “If you lend me a twenty-dollar bill, I don’t have to give you back the same bill. I can give you a different twenty, or a ten and two fives, and legally that’s just the same as if I gave you back the original, because currency is fungible. But if you lend me your dog, I have to give you back the exact same dog, because dogs aren’t fungible.”

I looked at Lucy, who nodded affirmation.

“Right,” I said, “so like stackable versus non-stackable items. Yes, it turns out dicks aren’t fungible. I thought they were, as long as you’re using a condom, but they’re very definitely not. I didn’t really grasp that at the time—”

“Rephrase!” chirped Anjali again, but I ignored her.

“— I didn’t understand why Ed was so upset with me. We sort of smoothed it over, but there was a certain amount of ongoing friction.”

“Which is not something you want with a dick,” Lucy offered unhelpfully. “Hey, is that your phone?”

I cocked my head and listened. “Yeah. Never mind, they can leave a message. But yeah, to me it was just a plastic thing and to him…it was _his_ dick. Sentimental value.” My phone stopped ringing. _Good._ “I didn’t understand what it meant for him at the time, and I got defensive and it took me ages to realise I was being shitty to him about it. I said sorry eventually, but…by then, damage done. I still feel bad about that.”

“Well, I can’t say this is quite how I was expecting my birthday to turn out, but it definitely hasn’t been dull.” Then Lucy’s phone rang. “Hang on a mo, that’ll be Aunty Vic and Uncle Jeremy, I expect.”

But after talking for a moment, she frowned and held the phone out to me. “It’s Mohammed. From work. He wants to talk to you.”

I took it. “Hello?” Mohammed was one of our grads. He’d been working for me on the Schiphol warehousing system, translating my prototype code into something dependable enough to run a billion-dollar cargo operation.

“Ms Weber?”

“Speaking. What’s up, Mohammed?” He wasn’t supposed to be working Saturday nights.

“Sorry to bug you out of hours, but we had a call from Schiphol…there’s a problem with the solver module.”

“Big problem, or small problem?” But I already knew the answer. Mohammed wasn’t the kind to ring me on the weekend just for the fun of it, and the solver module—my baby—was a critical piece of infrastructure. It was the decision-maker running a large container facility by the airport, choreographing an intricate ballet of trains and cranes and haulers and shipping containers. Without it, traffic would be building up, deadlines missed, penalties accumulating. In my mind’s eye I could see a counter whirring upwards at high speed, with a dollar sign in front of it.

“It’s not working. It keeps returning an ‘infeasible’ error. Jaden’s here with me, we’re running through it and trying to find where it goes wrong, but we don’t know the solver very well—”

I mouthed a very heartfelt _fuck._ “No, you did right to call me.” Mohammed was a bright lad, but constraint programming wasn’t his field, and it’s not the sort of thing you can talk someone through over the phone. “You’re in the office?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Does Lincoln know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, I’ll call him on my way in. Can you please pull the logs for me? I’m on my way but I’ll be a little while.”

“Okay. Thanks, Ms. Weber.”

“Bye now.” I turned to Lucy and Anjali. “Something very expensive just fell over.” I was already booking the taxi on my phone. “I have to go in. Anjali, I’ll get the taxi to drop you on the way.” Her place was well out of my way, and time in this case was a lot of money. But there was no way I was leaving her to taxi home alone, still half-drunk.

“I should stay, help Lucy clean up…”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Lucy said. “I’d drive you myself, but I’m in no fit state. I’m fine to clean up. You might want to have a shower first, though.”

“Oh shit, yes,” I said.

Anjali and I shared a hurried shower, and we had just finished putting our clothes back on when the taxi honked outside. Lucy saw us to the door.

“Good luck,” she said to me. “Give me a call if you need. Not too early though.”

“Thanks.” I hugged her good-night. I wasn’t sure how weird things were going to be between us, but apparently we were still on friendly terms. “Happy birthday, and…thank you for having us,” I said. My mother had taught me that formula when I was five years old, and I’d never lost the habit of saying it at the end of a party.

“Thanks for your company,” Lucy replied. “And Anjali… thank you for coming.”

She closed the door in our faces before I could reply.


	12. Meltdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A thrilling description of container storage management. Lucy and Sarah make an unwelcome discovery and tensions with Anjali's parents come to an end. Lucy finally hits Sarah with a much-needed clue bat.

It was a forty-minute taxi ride to Anjali’s place, and she fell asleep almost as soon as she’d buckled her seatbelt. I couldn’t blame her; she’d drunk much more than she was used to, and it had been quite a busy evening. I hoped she’d be able to enjoy a sleep-in next morning and not be too hungover. Meanwhile, I had a lot to process.

I had just offered the sexual services of my friend (and courtesan) to my other friend (and colleague), and she’d replied in a way I didn’t fully understand. I suspected things between us at work were going to be all kinds of weird.

My friend (and courtesan) had just casually mentioned that she planned to leave the country at the end of her doctorate, about nine months away, and that had sparked an uncomfortable twinge in me.

Both those thoughts were taking up a lot of space in my brain, whirring endlessly like the pinwheel on that application that’s never going to finish loading. But I needed to do my best to put them on hold, because the third thing couldn’t wait. The very expensive facility management system that we’d built—that I’d built the guts of—was not working.

It wouldn’t be an instant shutdown. The solver ran every half-hour, generating an updated schedule for the next twelve hours. They could work off that for a little while, but without the ability to run updates it couldn’t adjust as flights changed or owners booked new shipments. It would gradually drift further from reality until it became useless.

There was a fallback system, of course. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket with a project like this. After three hours or so they’d switch over to the fallback. But that was considerably less efficient, intended only to keep the most important activities going. It would require rejecting new contracts, which would get expensive quickly.

From what I remembered of the costs data, running on the fallback would cost something like fifty thousand dollars an hour, maybe more if we had to deal with cargo spoilage and missed deadlines.

_If the cost of an outage is fifty thousand dollars an hour, and the taxi to Anjali’s takes forty minutes, calculate the—_

I did my best to squelch that line of thought. Unlike Mohammed and Jaden, I wasn’t being paid to be on call. I had every right to do what I pleased with my Saturday nights, and I had a responsibility to get my friend home safely. That fifty-thousand-an-hour was Schiphol’s problem and my employer’s, not mine…or so I told myself.

It helped a little, but only a little. One’s employer’s problems have a way of becoming one’s own, and besides—I’d built the damn thing. For it to be falling over, that was a personal affront, and I could no more ignore that than Anjali had been able to ignore being called a liar.

As soon as I’d given the driver directions, I called Lincoln. I told him what I knew—not very much—and that I was on my way in to the office, but I’d be a while yet. He listened until I was done talking, then asked, “What’s your plan of attack?”

I’d been thinking about that in the shower. “Eyeball it quickly, see if there’s anything obvious, but there probably won’t be. There’s a diagnostic that will try to identify what’s causing it to fail, but that usually takes about twelve to fifteen hours to run, and the output is difficult to interpret. What I’d like to do is rent some cloud time and chunk it up into subset problems, run them in parallel on a couple of dozen instances, see if I can reproduce the issue on a simpler problem. Might cost a few thou but could save us some time.”

“If you think that’s the best option?”

“I do.”

“Okay then. Is there anything I can do that’s more useful than staying out of your way?”

 _Tell me I’m not an incompetent klutz and this isn’t my fault and I’m not going to get fired._ “No… not yet. I’ll keep you informed.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll leave you to it. Call if you need anything at all, wake people up if you need to. Good luck!”

I hung up—realising too late that I’d forgotten to say good-bye, and hoping he wouldn’t be offended by that, but there was nothing to be done about it right now—and tried to work out how to translate my ad-libbed plan into specifics.

Our container facility—I thought of it as ours, although really we were just contractors—was divided into five large wings and eight smaller ones, each served by between two and twelve robot cranes that ran on rails, offloading containers from incoming trains and semis, delivering them to their temporary home within the facility, shuffling them around as necessary to make way for other containers, and then loading them back onto the outgoing haulers when their time came. Cranes that size don’t move quickly, and Schiphol is always busy.

The solver module was the software that figured out how best to coordinate all the pieces of that great big machine and decide what cranes and containers went where, when, so that everybody got their iPhones and Tommy Hilfiger on time, while ensuring that nothing collapsed or thawed. It was a beautiful machine, more intricate than the finest watch…and for some reason it had stopped working.

That was not just bad, but perplexing. I’d tested the system under a range of simulations, and it shouldn’t just stop. Put too much demand on it, or take too many cranes out of action, and it would fall behind, with containers piling up. But we had automated checks to warn for excessive demand, and even if those had failed, it shouldn’t just _stop_.

I tried to think of conditions that would make it fail altogether. If all the cranes in one district were out of action, that would do it, since then there was no way at all to load or unload there—but that would already have been detected by our checks. If there was cargo we’d committed to stack, and nowhere left to stack it without breaching safety limits—but again, there were supposed to be checks to warn well before we reached that kind of critical capacity. There were a few other cases I could think of, but nothing that seemed very likely. My biggest worry was that there _was_ no real reason for the failure, that there was a bug somewhere in the fancy new algorithms I’d designed for this work. I’d tested them pretty thoroughly, but there were a lot of moving parts in there, and it was hard to be sure I hadn’t missed anything.

Still, I phoned Mohammed and asked him to check the warnings log, just in case one of those checks had raised an alarm that had somehow been missed. Then I talked to Jaden about getting the cloud environment set up. We’d used something similar for testing, but not in parallel.

When I ended my call, the taxi driver coughed. “We’re here, ma’am.”

“Oh! Sorry! I was miles away.” I had no idea how long he’d been stopped, waiting for me to finish up, and Anjali was still asleep. I shook her awake, and walked her to the door of her apartment complex. “You right from here?”

She fished out her keys. “I should be fine, thank you.” She opened the door, then turned and gave me a hug. “Good night. Thanks for seeing me home.”

“Sleep well.” I wouldn’t have said no to a good-night kiss, but she wasn’t wearing her scarf and I wasn’t sure quite what my two hundred dollars had entitled me to. Another time.

I watched until she was safely inside—the night had turned quite chilly—then hurried back to my taxi. It was another twenty minutes to my office, during which I did my best to stop trying to work out the root cause from first principles and instead focus on a methodical search strategy. It’s not easy for me to think that way; I take pride in my ability to understand a system, and it feels halfway to defeat having to take a trial-and-error approach. But I was vaguely aware that this was how a sensible adult was supposed to handle this kind of situation, and while I might not actually _be_ a sensible adult, I’d come this far by pretending to be one.

I will skip over the next few hours and spare you the technical details; they’re probably not very interesting unless you’re working for our competition, in which case I really shouldn’t share them. Suffice it to say that we tested eleven different strategies that didn’t work, and one that did—but because we were trying all of them in parallel, it only took us about four hours to figure out the cause of the bug.

It was a stupid, simple thing, as most bugs are. Wing H was one of the smaller wings in the storage park, dedicated to containers with special customs requirements. It didn’t see a lot of business, and so it only needed two cranes. They had imaginatively been named Cranes H1 and H2. Unfortunately, due to a version control snafu, the solver module was under the impression that they were named H0 and H1.

The consequence of this was that the solver module didn’t see Crane H2 because it wasn’t looking for it. Unable to find the non-existent “Crane H0”, it assumed it only had one crane to work with and did its best with that.

This worked fine for the first week of operation, and we would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids in Engineering who’d decided to take H1 offline for a spot of preventative maintenance. As far as the check module was concerned, H2 was still operational and therefore there should be no problem, but as far as the solver module was concerned it had no cranes at all in Wing H, which made it impossible to retrieve the containers it had been instructed to retrieve.

(We had, in fact, made the same mistake in _every_ wing of the facility, but since most of them had more than two cranes it was less of a problem to have one going unused. Presumably somebody would have noticed the idle cranes eventually, but since it was a brand-new setup, nobody knew what normal was meant to look like.)

By the time we’d confirmed the cause of the bug it was three-thirty in the morning. It took us ten minutes to code the fix and then another four hours to test it to my satisfaction—I really didn’t want to fuck things up through being tired and careless—before I could let myself breathe a little easier. Mohammed and Jaden were both yawning, and I called in a couple of other staff to relieve them while we monitored the new build. I was just filling in the overtime paperwork when my phone pinged with a message from Lucy.

_Hey S, just checking you and A got back safely last night._

_Yes, thanks. Saw her inside._

_Up already? Thought you’d be sleeping in!_

_Still awake. My blood is sugar and caffeine._

_Oh dear. That bad?_

_Took us a while but I think it’s under control._

Instead of texting back, she phoned me. After the pleasantries, during which neither of us mentioned The Incident of the previous night, she asked, “Have you had breakfast yet?”

“Yes?” I said.

She hadn’t missed my hesitation. “Just so we’re both on the same page, Sarah, chips from the vending machine don’t count as breakfast.”

“It wasn’t just chips!” She said nothing, and I felt obliged to fill the hiatus. “I had a couple of chocolate bars as well.”

“Uh huh. Well, as it happens, I’m having birthday lunch in town with Mum. If you’re still up, I was thinking I might swing by early and nab you for breakfast at that sandwich place. _Proper_ breakfast.”

“Oh that’s a lovely thought but I really should stay and monitor things—“

“I thought it was under control?” Damn her and her lawyerly ways.

“It is but we’ve just put in the update it’s not been thoroughly tested yet I want to monitor it for a few hours and while that’s running I can write a few—”

“Sarah. How long have you been awake?”

I did the mental arithmetic. “Twenty-six hours?”

“Uh huh. What would you tell one of your staff if they’d been up for twenty-six hours working on something and hadn’t eaten a real meal in twelve hours?”

“I’d...” I grumbled. “Tell them to go eat and get some rest before they start making stupid mistakes.”

“Correct answer. So what are _you_ going to do?”

I muttered something that might have been “go eat and get some rest”.

* * * * *

Lucy met me in the lobby and we walked to breakfast, short-cutting through a rabbit’s warren of little arcades selling second-hand fashions, crystals of dubious occult potential, and figurines of the Virgin Mary. The dour grey winter sunlight reminded me just how long I’d been awake, and suddenly I felt very tired.

Over toasted ham and cheese sandwiches I gabbled to Lucy about the outage: what had gone wrong, how we fixed it, my ideas for making sure it didn’t happen again. I was at that caffeine-powered level of sleep deprivation where I was talking quickly but a little incoherently, now and then forgetting my train of thought.

She waited patiently until I’d finished monologuing, then said, “Sarah, can we talk about last night?”

I looked at her, puzzled. For the last ten minutes I’d been talking of nothing else.

“…at my place? With you and Anjali?”

“OH! I… yeah, I guess that was last night. Sorry. Only room in my head for one thing at a time, sometimes.” My fatigue-fogged brain lurched as I remembered the other things. “Uh, I hope I didn’t—”

I trailed off, unsure how best to say “hope it’s okay that we put on a little sex show for you last night.” There are no greeting cards for that.

“Sarah. You’ve told me that I need to be really direct with you, so I’m going to take you at your word.” She was looking down at her plate, pushing crumbs around with the tip of her fork. “Obviously I’m curious about… well, how things are with you and Anjali, but that’s not my business.” Lucy looked up at me. “What I wanted to say is, I would very much like to—”

Then she trailed off, and I realised she was now staring _past_ me.

“Hmm?” I prompted.

She paused a moment. When she spoke again, her tone was different, carefully measured. “Sarah, do you know a guy who owns a motorbike, late fifties or so, greying hair, sort of broad face?”

“Not that I can think of? Maybe?”

She fished out her phone and showed me a photo. When I saw it, I recognised the occasion: a couple of months ago at Games Pixie, when she’d interrupted our game to go take a photo of the new games display. But the display wasn’t the subject of the shot. Her camera was pointed just past the display, through the window, at a guy sitting outside a cafe across the road. He had greying hair, and a motorbike helmet sat on the table next to his coffee, and he had a phone in his hand. “This guy?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, sorry. What’s up?”

“Don’t turn around, but the same guy just pulled up outside. I think he’s following you.”

“You…what?” I said, not very imaginatively. I was very tired and my day had already taken far too many twists. I wasn’t prepared for this James Bond shit and I’d used up my adrenaline reserves hours ago. I knew I should be freaking out but the sensation was just trickling in.

“I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out. When I was a kid, Mum taught me a game called Spot Daddy. I had to keep my eyes open for anybody who looked like my father, and if I saw him I had to tell my mum immediately. Then we’d clear out, and later she’d give me a Mars Bar.”

“Why would you—oh.”

“Yeah, my dad’s not a great person. Reasons why I decided to go into family law. So I’m a little bit paranoid about keeping an eye on who’s around, and I’ve noticed that guy a few times now. Only ever when you’re around. I think he was at trivia once, and then I noticed him outside Games Pixie. Looked like he might have been taking pictures with his phone. So I took this, just in case.”

“Okay…”

“And then yesterday when I went out to say good night to Pippa and Jerry and Davie, there was a guy who looked like him, sitting across the road two houses up with his lights off. I went over to check him out but he took off. If you put your phone on selfie and hold it up to look behind you, I’m pretty sure it’s him waiting across the road again.”

I did as she’d suggested. As I’ve said, I’m not much good with faces, and the selfie mode wasn’t exactly high-quality at that range, but he certainly looked similar. White, clean-shaven, fifty-ish. Sitting on his bike, helmet hanging off the bars, coffee in one hand, phone in the other. His jacket was different from the one in the photo, but the helmet looked about right. If Lucy thought it was the same guy, I believed her.

“The fuck? I have no idea who he is. Why would he be following me?”

“Ex? Somebody with a crush on you?”

“Ex, definitely not.” I reached for my glass and realised my hand was shaking. I couldn’t tell how much was exhaustion and how much was alarm. Lucy must have noticed it; she clasped my hand between both of hers, and I felt somehow grounded by her solidity. “A crush, I guess maybe I wouldn’t notice”—Lucy said “uh huh”—“but I don’t even remember ever meeting him.” Though I’d heard of stalkers latching onto women they’d never even spoken to. I tried to remember my neighbours from the brief encounters I’d had in the hallways and elevators of my apartment, but I was still drawing blanks. “You sure it’s me and not you?”

“Not absolutely certain,” she said. “Guess it _could_ be one of my old cases. You don’t make a lot of friends doing disputed custody and restraining orders. But if it was I’m pretty sure I’d recognise him. I paid attention to those guys. I’ve only ever seen him when I was with you and Anjali, and now just with you.”

“Hang on,” I said. “Hang on. We walked here. We cut through the arcade. Even if he was sitting outside the office when I left, he couldn’t have followed us on a bike. So how did he find us here?”

“That is an _excellent_ question.” Her grip on my hand tightened, then she released it. “Sarah, with your permission, may I check something on your phone?”

I unlocked it and passed it over. “Okay?”

Holding my phone so I could see what she was doing, Lucy flicked through my settings menus. “Had a couple of cases with guys hiding tracker apps on their partners’ phones. Let me see… location services… okay, have a look at this, see if there’s anything that shouldn’t be there.”

I scrolled through the apps that had permission to access my location. Taxi, weather, maps. “No, I think these are all legit.”

“Hmm. I don’t know if it’s possible to hide stuff, I’m not an expert, but… anybody had access to it lately?”

“Nope. I’ve had this one a year, haven’t needed a service yet.”

“Huh. Not that, then. So how…?” She handed me back my phone, and I slipped it back into my jeans.

As I did, my elbow brushed against my jacket, the one I’d been wearing since Lucy’s party. I never use my jacket pockets, not since being pickpocketed in a street market in Vienna some years back. But as I touched my side, I felt an unfamiliar lump.

“Wait up, what’s this…?”

I took it out.

It was Anjali’s phone.

At the time, I was far too tired and distracted to understand what Anjali’s phone was doing in my jacket pocket. It was only the next day that I remembered how Jacinta had knocked my things over at the spa—and evidently not just _my_ things—and how she had tried to put them all back the way they were. Until then, that would remain a mystery to me.

But even in my exhausted state, it wasn’t hard to guess who might have put a tracker on Anjali’s phone.

“Her parents gave this to her a couple of months ago,” I told Lucy. “First time she visited me after that, they called to check where she was.”

Lucy reached over, took the phone from me, and wrapped it up in several layers of paper serviettes like some strange game of pass-the-parcel, then stashed it inside one of those fold-up shopping bags before giving it back to me. “Some spyware doesn’t just track location,” she said softly. “With the right permissions it can access audio, camera, anything that’s on the phone.”

“Well _fuck_.” I tried to remember what we’d said and done within earshot of the phone. Quite a lot, all things considered.

Lucy squeezed my hand again. “It doesn’t necessarily mean it _has_ , but we need to talk about this. With Anjali. And figure out what to do about it.” She hesitated. “I mean, if you want me part of that, you don’t have to—”

“Please. She’s probably getting up soon, we should go straight over—”

Lucy shook her head. “You’re in no state. You need sleep.” I started to object, but she shut me down. “A few hours isn’t going to make a difference. And I do have to meet my mum. I know this is hugely upsetting for you”—she clasped her other hand on mine—“and I promise I’ll be there for you, but if you take my advice you’ll go home and go to bed and we’ll go over in the evening. Just let her know you have her phone and we’ll be over.” Then she looked past me. “Motorbike guy just made a call, then left.”

“Well thank god for that, at least. I wonder who _he_ is.”

“You said the parents are in Sydney, right?”

“Yeah.”

“My guess would be they’ve hired a private investigator. Check out where she’s going, who she’s with, what she’s doing. Had a few cases with Family Court dads doing that.”

I nodded, and yawned.

“Come on,” she said, “we can talk about this after you’ve had some shut-eye.”

I left her in town, agreeing to meet up later _en route_ to Anjali’s. Back at my place, I emailed Anjali:

_Hi, I have your phone, Lucy and I will drop by your place around 3 this afternoon if that’s okay?_

It irked me to omit the most important part, but as Lucy had pointed out, we were only speculating. We couldn’t confirm our suspicions until Anjali was able to unlock the phone for us, and it would not be doing her a kindness to leave her worrying for hours over something that might be a false alarm.

Having sent the email I lay back on my sofa, just for a minute, and sleep caught up with me at last.

* * * * *

I’d never been inside Anjali’s apartment. Indeed, until the previous night’s taxi ride I hadn’t even visited. It was neat and clean and extremely cosy, a bed-sit just large enough for one smallish woman who enjoyed her own company. With the three of us crowded in together it felt extremely cramped. She’d insisted on giving Lucy the one and only chair, so Anjali and I sat side by side on her bed.

She had at first been pleased to see the two of us, if a little confused as to why Lucy was there and why we hadn’t immediately given her back her phone. As Lucy explained things, her face slowly crumpled, and when Lucy had finished she said nothing.

I handed her the phone, wrapped in several layers of my winter socks to muffle the microphone. “If you unlock it, Lucy can check it.”

Anjali nodded slowly, keyed in her PIN, and handed it over to Lucy, and we watched in silence as Lucy did her thing. After a few minutes she put her finger to her lips, then showed us the list of installed apps, pointing at one called something like “map helper”. Then she powered the phone off, popped the battery out, and set it on the table.

“Installed February 27, three days after all the basic apps, and not updated since. It has access to location and mobile data, so everything it needs to let somebody know where you are. Can’t be sure from the name but it smells sus to me.”

“No access to anything else?” I asked. “SMS, email…?”

“No, but I can’t guarantee there’s nothing else on there. Have to get a professional to check it to be sure. There’s a company work uses when we need to check staff phones, like after that Guangzhou trip. I can find out if they’re available for a private job, or if they can recommend somebody.”

“Okay,” I said. “So what do we—”

I stopped. Next to me Anjali was shaking, rocking back and forth, making a soft wordless noise.

“Anjali?” I touched her shoulder. “Anjali?”

No answer. Her hands were clenched into tight balls.

“Anjali, are you okay?” Lucy asked. No answer.

I didn’t know what to do. I’d seen Anjali melt down before but never like this, never completely uncommunicative, and I’d never been there myself. She was hurting and I hated it and I didn’t know what she needed. I couldn’t stand it.

When I touched her hand with mine, she just pulled hers closer into her body, breaking the contact. Still rocking and shivering and keening softly to herself, and all my protective instincts howled at me to do something.

I looked up at Lucy. She was looking back at me, waiting for me to tell her what was needed. Like I knew. She mouthed something and pointed at herself, at the door, and I realised she was asking _should I go?_ I gestured back, _I don’t know_. Now I was starting to shiver myself, besieged by vicarious emotion. What to do?

The only thing I could remember was a story I’d read years ago, not long after I got my own diagnosis, from a woman who’d been caregiver to a non-speaking autistic girl. I didn’t know if it was right for the situation, but I didn’t have any better ideas, so I did that.

“Hey Anjali,” I said softly, “I’m going to put a blanket over you, but if you don’t want it, you can shrug it off.” There was one on the bed, and Anjali was sitting on that, but I found another folded at the foot of it. “And I’m going to get you a glass of water—oh, thanks Lucy.” She’d already risen to fetch a glass from the rack by the sink and fill it.

I wasn’t really sure how water was supposed to help, but it was what the woman had done in the story I’d read. I guess hydration is important? I accepted the glass from Sarah and touched it to the back of Anjali’s hand, but she didn’t take it. “It’s next to the bed. You can have it if you want but you don’t have to. Lucy’s going to go now, but I’m going to stay here with you unless you want me to go.”

Lucy nodded at me, mouthed something else that I didn’t get, and let herself out very quietly. Anjali shuddered, and I sat with her, and I waited. The clock ticked, and I waited, and I waited.

It had been early afternoon when we arrived. It was getting on for dusk when Anjali spoke at last, voice dull and empty. “May I have that water, please?”

I passed it to her again, and she sipped from it and passed it back to me. Time stretched out a little longer before she spoke again. “Is this my fault?”

“Is it…what? How could it be your fault?”

“I’ve been lying to them, haven’t I?”

“Oh god.” I hugged her, unthinking. She didn’t hug me back, but neither did she flinch away. “No no no. You’re a grown woman. They don’t have the right to know all your business. You have the right to keep some secrets.” As I said it I wondered how much of that was honest advice, and how much selfishly defending the arrangement I had with her, the arrangement which I enjoyed and her parents could never have approved. I thought maybe eighty-twenty. But it was true, even if my motives for saying it weren’t purely altruistic.

“I want so much just, just to have a normal relationship with them. I know there’s a stereotype with Indian parents, and it’s not entirely false, but…I talk with my friends about _their_ families and it’s not like this. Not this…crazy. Maybe if I was normal.”

“No.” I wasn’t sure if she was in the right place to hear my script, but it was the closest thing I had for this. “Not everything that happens is your responsibility. You don’t have influence over everything. Your parents _chose_ to do this. It was a shitty choice and you didn’t force them to make it. They get to own it.”

“What if they’ve been listening to us? The things we’ve talked about?”

 _Then they know you’ve been fucking me for money, and we’re really fucked,_ I thought but didn’t say. I was trying not to panic about that myself—I wasn’t completely sure of my legal situation, but even aside from that, it _really_ wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted my colleagues knowing, or my family. “Let’s not stress about that yet,” I said, as if that was the kind of thing one could just decide not to do. “Let’s find out what they _have_ done, and then we can figure things out based on that.”

“I guess,” she said, in a tone that suggested she had no more faith than I did in our ability to stick to that advice. “How do we do that?”

“Lucy said she knew a company.”

“Oh…where _is_ Lucy?” Anjali looked around as if expecting to find her fallen down behind the desk.

“She left. To give us some space.” I checked my phone, and the brightness of the screen made me realise how dark it had become. I’d thought I’d felt it buzz some time ago, and indeed, there was a message from Lucy: _Here to talk if you want to. No rush._

I replied. _Still at A’s. She’s talking but v shaken. Hope you got home safe?_

_No. I’m just up the road at a cafe._

_You what?_

_Waiting around in case you needed company or a lift after. It’s okay, I brought a book._

“She’s just up the road,” I told Anjali. “Shall I ask her to come back?”

“Um.” She shook her head as if trying to dislodge something. “Yes? Maybe?”

Ten minutes later Lucy was back in the flat with us, turning on the lights that we’d left untouched as the flat slid into darkness, making tea, switching on the oven. “I brought pastries,” she said. “I reckoned neither of you would have eaten.”

We sat and munched together in silence. In an odd sort of way, it felt more intimate than…had it just been the previous night? I’d lost track, and had to check my phone calendar to confirm that it really had been less than twenty-four hours since I’d debauched “Lily” in Lucy’s dining room.

After we’d eaten, and things were feeling a little less fraught, Lucy said, “You should both consider getting legal advice.”

“You’re a lawyer,” I replied. “You’ve done family cases before.”

“I can’t be _your_ lawyer. I work for P-K, I can’t just take independent jobs, especially not for a co-worker. Even if I was allowed to, it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

I nodded reluctantly. “Point taken, I guess.”

“Look, I can recommend somebody. A friend of mine.” She picked out one of Anjali’s notepads and jotted down a name and phone number. “Get yourself a new phone, call Salwa tomorrow, tell her I sent you. She’s going to need to know about your arrangement.”

“Okay,” said Anjali, although she didn’t sound at all certain.

“I’ll get you details for a guy to look at your phone. Anything else?”

Anjali looked at us uncertainly. I didn’t know what was best to do, but I was pretty sure nobody else did either, and I was getting back to that state of tiredness where I didn’t trust my own judgement.

“Okay, what if Lucy and I head home now and let you rest, but you know how to reach us if you need anything.”

“Thank you, I will.”

We were almost out the door when I remembered. I left Lucy waiting and spoke to Anjali softly: “By the way, we have a date booked next weekend, did you want to cancel or—”

“No, I’ll be okay,” she said. “I think.”

* * * * *

Anjali looked up at me from her seat on my sofa. “So, ma’am, what are we playing tonight?”

I’d treated the two of us to a banquet dinner at a posh Middle-Eastern restaurant, because both of us needed cheering up after the week we’d had; as well as the phone business, I’d been up to my ears dealing with the aftermath of our little Schiphol glitch, documenting everything and making sure we didn’t make the same mistake twice. The banquet had been rather larger and more delicious than expected and we’d eventually admitted defeat, boxing the last of it up and taking it back to my place for later.

“Well, I was going to tell you a story…”

“Go ahead…”

I stood behind her, hands propped on the back of the sofa. “Once upon a time, there was a great big company. So big that nobody really knew exactly what they did, but everybody agreed it was _dreadfully_ important and it made a lot of money.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“In that company was a senior manager named Mr. Brown, and he had two junior execs working for him. Both of them hired at the same time. One of them was Miss Lily Bell.”

I ruffled her hair, just enough to punctuate my story.

“Miss Bell was very bright. She came top of her class in university. She made the best pie charts and wrote the best reports and came up with _all sorts_ of good ideas for new products. And as well as that, she was lovely. She never had an unkind word for people, she remembered everybody’s dietary requirements, and every December she sent everybody in her department a handmade card where she wrote about some of the good things they’d done that year.”

I stroked her hair again, and then leaned back.

“The other one was Miss Miriam Dorn. She was also very bright, and she _would_ have come top of her class if she hadn’t been sharing it with Miss Bell. Her pie charts and reports were very good but not _quite_ as good as Miss Bell’s. And she wasn’t as nice as Miss Bell.”

With the tip of one finger, I stroked the back of Lily’s neck. She squirmed, just a little.

“In fact, I’m sorry to say, she wasn’t nice _at all_.

“Now, one day when they were all in a meeting, Mr. Brown mentioned that he was planning to retire at the end of the year, and everybody knew that Miss Bell and Miss Dorn were the favourites to replace him.

“Now, Miss Bell _should_ have been the obvious choice, because her work was just that little bit better than Miss Dorn’s. But somehow, she had a run of bad luck. One of her reports turned out to be missing an important section, even though she knew she’d written it - somehow she must have accidentally saved an older version over the newer one. She had to stay up all night rewriting it at the last minute. And sometimes the data in her spreadsheets was wrong, and she couldn’t understand why it didn’t match the proper values. Lots of little things going wrong. But fortunately Miss Dorn was always there to encourage her.

“It happened that the Board of Directors was meeting to make a decision about whether to buy Luxembourg, and both Miss Bell and Miss Dorn were giving presentations to the Board. They spent weeks working on their presentations, and gave one another feedback on their slides, and then the company flew them to the Bahamas because that’s where the Board was meeting. For tax reasons.

“The meetings were going all week, and Miss Bell was due to give her first presentation on the Monday, around one o’clock. But at lunchtime, when she switched on her laptop to go through her slides one last time… instead of her desktop, a message popped up with a picture of a pirate and a message that just said ‘You’ve Been Pwned By Davey Jones! All Your Base Are Belong To Us!’”

“Oh no,” murmured Lily, not sounding _entirely_ shocked.

“Poor Miss Bell was at her wit’s end. The meeting was due to start in just forty-five minutes, and here she was with no slides and no laptop. But luckily her good friend Miss Dorn was there.”

“How fortunate,” said Lily.

I sidled around to the front of the sofa and sat down next to her. “And she said, ‘I think I have a copy of your slides on mine, from when you sent it to me for feedback last week. I could lend it to you for the presentation this afternoon.’ And she loaded up her laptop and there it was.

“’Oh, Miriam, you’re the best!’ said Miss Bell.

“‘But,’ said Miss Dorn, ‘I need a favour from you first.’

“‘Of course,’ said Miss Bell. ‘Anything for a friend.’

“‘Come with me,’ said Miss Dorn, and she led Miss Bell to a little meeting room just near the big one where the Board was meeting that afternoon. ‘I’ve been feeling quite nervous myself about this week’s meetings, and the best way to deal with that starts like this.’ And she turned to Miss Bell and kissed her.”

“Oh, Miss D—mmph!” spluttered Lily, for I had just matched my actions to my words. When I eventually let her disengage for a moment, she exclaimed, “Well, I—Miss Dorn! What are you—mmph!”

When I let her go again, after a much longer and deeper kiss, I said, “Miss Bell, we only have thirty-five minutes before your presentation. If you want to make it on time, we can’t waste time on poorly considered questions.” I slid one hand up her back, grasped the back of her neck, as the other teased at the V of her blouse. “I’m doing you a huge favour here.”

“Yes, and I’m very grat—eek!”

As she was talking, I had slid my hand around, grasping her breast possessively. “Now, Lily, you’re obviously very worked up, and as your good friend, I can’t relax and concentrate while you’re stressed. So we need to do something about this hysteria of yours and we need to act fast. Over my knee.”

“What?”

“Thirty-two minutes.” I pulled her down across me, grinning as she quivered in my arms. “It’s okay, you’re going to love this bit.” My fingers slid up her stockinged thigh, pushing her skirt aside, rough and quick.

“What are you—ooh!” She was warm and soft, and through her gusset I could already feel the beginnings of arousal.

“Don’t worry, I’m not undressing you.” At least, not technically. I worked a fingertip inside the gusset, seeking, stroking. “It’s a shame we don’t have more time but I bet we can have you well and truly relaxed by one o’clock. Now, are you going to be difficult?” With my other hand, I squeezed a little tighter at the back of the neck.

“Oh, no, Miriam, I’ll—”

“Good. In that case, let’s have your knees a little wider apart, hmm? Yes, like that. Just like that.” My fingertip was outlining her lips, just starting to wander inwards.

“Miriam, this isn’t, we shouldn’t—”

“Lily, you’re a very clever girl, but sometimes you need to learn when to take somebody else’s lead. Speaking of which, I think you should call me Miss Dorn. Got that?”

She shuddered as my fingertips drifted into more sensitive territory. “But—”

“The words I’m looking for”—I pressed a little harder, felt her body jerk—“are ‘yes, Miss Dorn’. And if you want variety, ‘please, Miss Dorn’ or ‘thank you, Miss Dorn’. You’re not going to need ‘but’. Do you understand?”

“Y-yes, Miss Dorn.” That catch in her voice made me want to do bad things to her…well, worse things. So I worked my fingers in deeper, feeling how slick she’d become, probing into her, drawing out her lubrication.

“Oh…”

“See, I told you you’d love this.” I slid two fingers all the way in and she groaned, back arching, and subsided again as I drew them out. I teased her that way for a little while, listening to the roughness of her breathing, the slick-slick-slick of my fingers as they slid through her wetness.

“Let’s move you, cutie.” I eased her up off my knees, and laid her over the armrest. “Like that.” I continued to tease her until she was squirming at every touch, and then I said, “Twenty-six minutes. Better get a move on if you’re going to have time to check your slides before the show. Luckily for you, I came prepared for this trip.”

I reached behind me, down under the cushions where I’d stashed a bag before dinner. Lily couldn’t see what I was doing, but she made curious noises as I tipped it out, and more so as she heard me shedding my slacks. But as I snapped the harness into place, she made a small sound of recognition.

“Miss Dorn, why on earth did you bring _that_ on this trip?”

“Think of it as a relaxation aid.” I pressed a small button near the base, and it started to buzz, which earned another gasp from Lily even before I eased the gusset aside and nuzzled the head against her.

“Miss Dorn, you said you weren’t undressing me…”

“And I’m not. Your skirt and your panties are still on, aren’t they? Now, we have twenty-four minutes before your presentation starts. So what do you say?”

In a very quiet voice: “Please, Miss Dorn?”

“See, I knew you were a smart girl.” I grasped her hips and slowly eased the cock into her. “There, isn’t that _nice?_ ”

“Yes, thank you, Miss Dorn.”

I kept going until it was all the way in, my hips pressed against her and the deep hum of the cock rippling through us both. Then I bent over her, my chest against her back. Gripping her hair, I turned her face sideways, and nipped at her ear. “You are _such_ a nice girl, Lily, always thinking of others. It’s time somebody did something nice to you for a change.” And I began to move, enjoying my possession of her, and she sighed happily and started to match my tempo, pressing back.

“See? Your body knows how this works.” I tugged her underwear down just a fraction, so it wouldn’t snag uncomfortably, and picked up the pace, but only a little. “This feels so nice, doesn’t it? I could do this for hours.”

“Oh, please, Miss Dorn… I can’t miss the meeting.”

“I suppose you can’t. What is the—oh dear, only eighteen minutes to go! I suppose we’d better do something about that.” I clicked the little button on the strap-on, and the hum intensified. Reaching around, I slipped my hand between her thighs from the front, and sought out another little button. “Shall we get you ready for it, then?”

“Please, Miss, please…”

“It’s my pleasure.” I held back no longer, taking her fast and rough, thrusting and grinding as my fingers worked her. From all our time together, I knew the responses of her body well, knew just how far I could bring her without quite letting her over the edge, fingers easing off and slipping away to less sensitive zones every time she was close to the point of no return.

Every time I did, she chased my fingers, hips tilting and plunging. Perhaps at first she thought I hadn’t quite got it, but eventually she must have realised that I was toying with her, and she began to whimper.

“Fourteen minutes…”

“Oh please, miss, _please_ let me…”

“You want to come?”

“Oh, so much…please, mistress.”

“What about ‘please, boss’?”

“Oh… oh… please, boss.”

“There you are.” And with a subtle movement of my fingers I pushed her over the edge where she’d been dangling for minutes, until she screamed and ground back against me, hard enough to make the vibrations thrum through my pelvis, almost hard enough for me to come myself.

Almost.

I held her quite gently as she came down, stroking her hair, her cheek. “There you go, Lily. Feeling all relaxed and ready to present?”

“Oh, yes, yes…I’ll just need to straighten myself out, first.”

“Mmm. Well, we do have eight minutes left. The thing is, though, Lily…”

“What, Miss Dorn?”

“Well, _I_ haven’t come yet. Don’t you think it’s only fair that I should, after all I’ve done for you?”

“But I… eight minutes…”

“So you’d better hurry up.” I ditched the harness and sat back on the lounge.

“But I’ve never…” said Lily, who most definitely had, quite a few times to my knowledge.

“You’ve got eight minutes to figure it out… well, seven now.”

She knelt, looking up at me for one moment before her hands and tongue were on me.

“Oh, yes, Lily, that’s good…I think you’re a natural at this.” And then I did something stupid.

I held up my phone, pointed at her, and said “click”.

She looked up, and froze, and like an idiot I continued with the scene. “Just a little something to remember this moment by, Lily…”

Her mouth worked silently for a few seconds—not on me—and then she said, “Schwarzchild.”

For a moment I couldn’t remember what it meant. The word was familiar, but we’d never used it until now.

“Safeword,” she added, just as it clicked for me, and her face crinkled and her eyes began to leak, and I dropped the phone like a hot potato.

“It’s okay, it’s not real.” I leaned forwards to grasp her shoulders, reassure her. “The phone’s switched off, I’ll unlock it and you can see.”

“I know, Sarah, it’s just…too close, too much like...” Anjali trailed off into inarticulate hand-waving, but I understood what she meant. Too much like having her phone hacked, having somebody spy on her private life. Our games of control had become overshadowed by creepy reality. “That guy has been _following_ me for months. I keep telling myself if he’d seen anything, I would have heard about it from my parents by now, I know he can’t get into the building, but I still feel like I’m being watched. It feels dirty.”

“Oh, Anjali, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.” I pulled her up and held her, and she sobbed in my arms, and for the second time that week all I could do was be present, quiet and still, until the thunderstorm in her head had subsided to manageable proportions.

When she did speak, she said, “You should probably put some clothes on.”

“Uh, yeah.” I had to hunt for my underwear—it was under the couch, of course—but I didn’t mind playing comic relief for Anjali’s benefit. I pulled my gear on and sat beside her once more.

“I really am sorry. My fault entirely, I should have known.”

“It’s not your fault. It sort of snuck up on me. I just, I just…” She swallowed. “Sarah, I’m eight hundred kilometres from my parents, and it’s not nearly far enough.”

“Yeah.”

“At first I thought it was like…everybody has fights sometimes, it’s just one of those things you have to get through. Or it’s an Indian parent thing, and sometimes you just have to put up with them being a bit conservative. But I’ve been talking with some of my friends”—I knew she meant her desi friends—“and I’m realising, this isn’t just some parents are a bit more conservative than others, this is wrong.”

“It is. You shouldn’t have to feel like this.” A long-ago memory caught at me. “Do you know, one of the first things I remember when I was teaching you, they wouldn’t let you have a phone until you were seventeen.”

“Yep. And Mahesh got his on the same day even though it wasn’t his birthday and he was two years younger…you know, I always thought that was them finally letting me grow up, but now I wonder if it was so they could call me and check up on me any time.” She chuckled bitterly. “And then when they gave me this new one, I thought they were trying to make up, and instead…I don’t know if I can ever trust them again. If they find out I’ve figured out the phone, I expect they’ll try something else instead. Sarah, I don’t know if I ever want to see them again.”

I considered my words carefully. “You have every right to make that choice, and plenty of reason, but it’s a big decision. There are other possibilities we can work through.”

“Sarah, I’m…not really coping. I haven’t been able to work at all this week. I just go into the office and stare at the screen and think about this all day long. I read some stuff about establishing boundaries and it’s very Anglo, I’d have to work out how it translates to a Hindu family. _Maybe_ if I applied that stuff I could get somewhere with my parents, to something we could live with.”

“Oh, well, that sounds hopeful—”

She held up her hand. “But. It would take _so much_ of my focus. For weeks, maybe for months. Sarah, if I do that, I think it would mean dropping out of my PhD.”

“Oh, but you’ve come so far on that, you’re almost there!”

“I know. And I don’t know for sure if it even would work out with my parents… and even then, if it does…I’m _not_ giving it up! It’s not fair. I’ve worked too hard for this.”

I hugged her tight. “You shouldn’t.”

“And the other thing is…I don’t know if you’ll understand, but…sometimes when I was a kid I hated being Indian. I wanted to fit in with the other girls, you know how it is. Fat chance. And as I’ve grown up I’ve been trying to get past that and be comfortable in my skin. We go back every year but it still feels like I’m going there as a child. Some day I want to be able to go to India as an adult and understand more about where I’m from. I know I’ll never really belong there but I’d like to be…less of a stranger to it? Do you know what I mean?” She was flapping her hands feverishly.

“I think so?”

“But whenever I think about India, my parents are in the way. I just end up angry and resentful. I keep bringing everything back to the way they treat me, and I hate that. I want to be able to have a relationship with it without it being through them, I know that doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it does. I mean, not the same thing, but…I used to think of my stepdad as the guy who was marrying my mum. Which I resented. And then as Cassie’s dad.” I touched my ribs from reflex, the way I always do when I remember Cassie. “And then after she died, suddenly I had to start thinking about him as John, an actual human being, not just my mum’s husband. Sort of like that?”

“Sort of.”

The silence stretched out, and it might have stretched out longer if my tummy hadn’t gurgled absurdly loudly. “Sorry about that, no sense of decorum. Get you a drink?”

“Thank you. Water, please.”

When I came back with the water, Anjali said, “Am I a bad person if I choose my degree instead of my parents?”

I shook my head. “No. That’s a really hard decision, but I don’t want to think of you giving up everything you’ve been working for for…people who don’t appreciate you.”

She reached out for my hand, squeezed it. “I think the worst part is not knowing what they know. If they find out about us…”

I nodded. It was not a good thought. “Did you hear back from Lucy’s phone guy?”

“Yes, I took it in on Tuesday and he sent a report back yesterday. He confirmed the GPS tracker and he also found they’d installed a keyboard app with a logger, so it would have been recording everything I typed in.”

I started to say “Oh _shit_ ,” but Anjali held up her hand. “I only used it for a couple of days. It wasn’t very good so I installed SwiftKey instead. So they would only have had what I typed during that time, but, that probably includes my passwords.”

“Uh oh.”

“He didn’t find anything else. No sign of voice, camera, or SMS access, thank heaven for small mercies. But the passwords are…bad. I changed them, of course, and in case they notice I told my parents I got a virus and had to change everything, but I don’t know what they might have.”

Anjali had changed instant messaging services every few years, following her friends from one platform to another. At the time I’d grumbled—if I had my druthers we’d still be on IRC, change is bad, get off my lawn—but now I was glad of it, since it meant the late-night chats where we’d talked about her autism and changing her degree were now safely buried. The GPS data was intrusive and creepy but in itself, not too incriminating; the main thing it would tell them was that Anjali came over to visit me every couple of weeks and usually stayed over, but that part they already knew; as far as her parents were concerned we were hanging out to talk academia, have dinner, and watch movies.

The main liability was email. Anjali had been using the same webmail account ever since she started her undergrad, and in that time we’d sent one another more than a thousand emails. Thanks to Kate’s good advice, she’d set up a burner email for her sugar-baby profile, which she hadn’t touched in more than a year, and we had mostly avoided discussing our arrangement on the regular account. Mostly. The vast majority of our exchanges were perfectly innocuous: programming and mathematical discussions, cat memes, holiday snaps.

But not all of them.

Somebody who read through our correspondence closely might have noticed us mentioning “Lily” here and there, and perhaps wondered why Anjali was so familiar with this person who was never mentioned outside our conversations. Chance remarks like “I’ll be away next weekend so I’ll pay Lily in advance” might become a real problem if somebody with a record of Anjali’s movements happened to notice that her visits coincided with Lily’s.

And then there was the checklist Anjali had sent me eleven months earlier. It wasn’t particularly conspicuous—she’d tacked it onto a reply in an ongoing email chain, and all she’d written was “here’s that checklist, as discussed”. But if anybody was curious enough to open the attachment it would be very clear how the two of us were spending our time during Anjali’s visits.

At that point, we had to pause our discussion, because Anjali had gone quite green about the gills. It took her five or ten minutes of deep breathing before she was ready to go on.

“Of course, we don’t know that they actually have this. Just a thought, can we check your account history?” I said, although I couldn’t imagine that they’d be obsessive enough to put a logger on her phone and then not use the information they got.

And there it was: on February 14th, a few days after Anjali had started using the phone, somebody with a Sydney IP had downloaded an archive of her mailbox. Nothing since, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been reading new messages when they came in.

I heard a choking noise beside me, and I turned to hug Anjali tight, but stopped when I saw her face.

“Do you know…do you know how many times they’ve called me for tech support? Dad got a virus a couple of years ago and I was up all night recovering his files and cleaning it off. And this. _This_ is what I get in return. I suppose they paid somebody to do it. Arseholes! I’m _done_ with them, Sarah, I’m done.”

But were they done with us?

“If they knew about us,” I said cautiously, “do you think they—“

She considered it, then shook her head tentatively. “I’d have heard the explosion from here. And my mother still chats to you on Facebook, yes?”

“Yeah, not much, but she asked me for recommendations a couple of weeks back for a friend whose daughter needs tutoring.”

“Let me think.” She shut her eyes, pressed her fingers to her forehead. “When I go somewhere new, they sometimes phone me up. Just to ask what I’m up to.”

“Like at my place.”

“Exactly. And when I’ve been emailing with people, they’ve been making excuses to ask about that. ‘Do you still talk to that boy Jyoti?’, that sort of thing. They don’t ask about you much, and when they do, they seem to be happy with me hanging around with you. As far as they’re concerned, you’re a responsible adult. But any guy I email with, it’s Spanish Inquisition time. So, no, I don’t think they’ve figured it out.”

“Yet.”

“Yet. For what it’s worth, they gave me a lecture once on how to spot lesbians, and I’m afraid you don’t fit the bill. Not nearly butch enough. And I don’t think it’s ever occurred to them that I’m bi.”

I nodded. My Facebook presence was very bland; it’s not that I keep my orientation a secret, but I hadn’t been serious with anybody since Ed, so there was no reason why they would have known from a casual look. “But as long as they have those emails…”

She nodded. “It is unpleasantly Sword-of-Damocles-y. If they ever do get suspicious, they might look more closely.”

That gnawing in my gut again. “Yeah. I don’t like it at all. Have you talked to Lucy’s lawyer friend?”

“No, I haven’t. I know I should, I just hate the idea of telling all this to a stranger. I just feel sick at the thought.”

She sounded so miserable and exhausted that I judged it best not to press the matter. “All right. Well, think about it, okay?”

“There’s something else.” She was speaking slowly now, reluctantly. “Sarah…I was going to tell you about this last week but then everything blew up and I didn’t get a chance. The group in Bern, they’ve offered me a postdoc. Conditional on visas and completing my PhD of course, but it seems pretty solid. Language is going to be an issue but everybody in the team knows English and I still have a little bit of French from school.”

“What? That’s great news! I’m so proud of you. Guess I’d better dig out those German books for you. Let me know if there’s any info you need translated—”

She held up her hand. “They need me to start in April. Something to do with a funding deadline, they had another student but he pulled out. So I’d need to be submitting my thesis in February.”

“But you were due in…May, yes?”

“That’s right. I think I can do it. I have most of my results. I talked to Professor Cheng and he thinks I can go for it, there are a couple of bits I can cut if I don’t have the time. I really want this, they’re doing some fascinating work with collapsed-matter physics. But there’s still so much to do in these six months and I’m going to be flat out, even without my family playing stupid games…”

“Oh.” And suddenly I understood her hesitancy. “You mean…”

“Sarah, I think I need to put our arrangement on hold. No, strike that. I _do_ need to put it on hold. For a while, at least, until things are less crazy.”

That sudden churning in my stomach, a feeling of loss. Of course I had known that things would change when she completed her doctorate, but that had still been nine months in the future. Not now…

“How long do you think you’d stay in Europe?” I asked.

“Honestly? I’m not sure if I’d be coming back. Perhaps to visit, but I think…if it goes well, it might be a permanent move.”

“Oh. Wow. Is this about your family?”

“Partly. But they have a really good group there, I’d really like to be part of that. And, yes, there are a couple of Indian-Swiss staff in the team who have never heard of my family.”

“Well.” I didn’t know what to say. “It’s been a long day and you’re sounding pretty wrecked.” _And I’m not coping. I don’t want this._ “What do you say we call it a night and cuddle up under my quilt?”

“Sarah, you’re a lifesaver.” She managed a wan smile. “I can’t imagine Miss Dorn would be this gentle.”

I lay awake for hours, long after Anjali was asleep, trying to think my way out of the sudden shock to my plans. And eventually, somewhere around four in the morning, I came up with an idea. It was a terrible idea, as so many four-in-the-morning ideas are, but to me at that moment it seemed quite perfect.

* * * * *

I hadn’t seen much of Lucy since that unhappy evening at Anjali’s place. I didn’t think much of it; I had plenty to occupy me with the cleanup from our Schiphol bug, rigorously testing the new setup, chasing up how it had happened, and writing an Incident Report. As if I didn’t have enough distractions, our government chose that week to announce a national survey on whether people like me should be allowed to marry our loved ones. Lucy and I said hi to one another in passing, but she didn’t organise any lunch outings and I didn’t push the matter; if I thought about it at all, I guess I supposed she was busy.

It wasn’t until the following Monday that she stopped by my desk to drag me out to lunch. It was cold and windy, one of those bleak August days that demands comfort food, and Lucy and I ended up sharing an HSP in a park while several gulls looked on in hopes of leftovers.

For several minutes we grumbled to one another about the survey over mouthfuls of meat and chips, and then Lucy abruptly changed the topic. “So you know, I had a chat with Anjali about your arrangement. Not the saucy details or the money, just wanted to be sure you weren’t taking advantage of her.”

“Oh. And am I?” It was meant as a joke, but it fell flat.

“Tell me again how the two of you got into this situation?”

“Well, uh, escorting was all her idea. Not something I ever would have suggested to her. But it was a difficult situation and I didn’t have a better alternative to suggest. So we talked through it, got advice from a friend of mine, worked out how to make it as safe as she could. But she wasn’t having any luck and she was getting a bit down about it. So I thought I’d look at it from the guy’s side, created an account and went to look at her profile from that perspective.”

“From the guy’s side? But she said you had a female persona.”

“Oh, yeah, I did. Miriam Blaylock.”

“Miriam Blaylock? As in the Catherine Deneuve character from _The Hunger?_ ”

“Uh…yes. It was just easier to get into character and that was the first name I thought of.”

Lucy nodded, and waited, until I remembered I’d been halfway through an explanation.

“So her profile looked okay, but she still wasn’t having much luck, so I sent her a message from ‘Miriam’ just to cheer her up a bit. Kind of flirty. I had assumed she was straight, more fool me, so I never expected her to bite.”

“Uh huh. So the best way you could think of to cheer up your friend was to make up a false identity, named for a vampire who seduces a younger woman, and pay money to send her a flirty message on the sugar-daddy website.”

“I, uh—it sounds kind of stupid when you put it that way, but yeah, it made sense at the time.”

“Sarah, are you being entirely honest with yourself here?”

“Am I—are you saying that I had designs on Anjali?”

“I’m not saying that. But I am _asking_ it.”

“Hmm.” I bought myself some thinking time with a large bite of artery-ravaging goodness. “This is going to be hard to explain…I don’t suppose you know the term ‘alexithymia’?”

I was already gearing up to recite the definition, but Lucy surprised me. Without hesitation she replied, “A deficit in the ability to recognise or describe one’s own emotions, often associated with autism?”

“Er, yes, that.”

“I read up on a few things after you said you were autistic.”

“Huh. Okay. Thank you.” It took some effort to squelch the canned explanation I’d been expecting to deliver. “So, yeah. I get that sometimes. Maybe I was attracted to her and didn’t recognise it, maybe that affected my choices? I can’t say for sure that it didn’t happen. All I can tell you is that if I was, I didn’t notice it at the time. Sorry, I’m not trying to be evasive here, it’s just how I work sometimes.”

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if you were. There’s a lot there to like and she’s an adult. And I’m giving you partial credit for coming clean with her early instead of stringing it out. I’m just worried that if you’re not being honest with yourself, one of you might get hurt.”

“I would never—”

“You wouldn’t hurt her _on purpose_. But Sarah, the way she talked about you…she looks up to you, she admires you. When somebody puts that much faith in you, it’s real easy to hurt them by accident if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Well, yes, but I know what I’m doing _now_.”

“Do you, though? You’re a hard woman to read, Sarah. What happens after she graduates? Do you just wrap up that arrangement and find some other sugar baby? I know it’s not my business, you have no obligation to answer me, but I reckon you ought to make sure at least _you_ know the answers. I’d hate to see either of you get hurt.”

“I don’t really know. I don’t think I’d be looking for another sugar baby, not a stranger. That would just feel weird. I have…sometimes the only way I know what I really want is to make a choice and then wait and see whether I find myself feeling miserable about it after it’s too late to change my mind.”

Lucy flicked a yoghurt-covered sliver of meat off to one side, and the throng chased it like iron filings to a magnet, louder and more raucous still, until one lucky bird escaped with the prize. “That doesn’t sound like fun.”

I tossed the soggy end of a chip into the middle of our attending throng of gulls, triggering a noisy skirmish. At least _that_ drama was easy enough to understand and to predict. “Not really, no. And right now it’s hard to concentrate on anything, with this crap with the emails hanging over us.”

I filled her in on what Anjali and I had found: what her parents had, what they didn’t have, what they might yet discover. She nodded slowly as I talked, then said, “So has she talked to Salwa?”

I shook my head. “She’s really upset. You saw how she was.”

“I get that, Sarah, but it’s our job to help people with this kind of thing.”

“I know, but it’s just hard…will it do any good?”

“Well, she can talk to Anjali, tell her what her options are—”

“Yes, but _are_ there good options? If we report it to the police, is there anything they can do?”

“Well, it’s probably illegal under the Surveillance Devices Act, but you have to consider—” She stopped herself. “This is stuff you should be asking her.”

“I get that. Just wanting to know what to expect. And worrying about what happens if our setup comes out—”

“No. Look, Sarah. I told you already, I cannot give you legal advice. Legally, ethically, I _can’t_. I’m your friend, Sarah, I am so sorry you and Anjali have been dumped into this mess, but please. Don’t take advantage of that, don’t pressure me to do what I told you I can’t do, and for the love of god don’t tell me about anything illegal. Talk to a lawyer who can represent you and who is covered by lawyer-client privilege.”

“I wasn’t—” My turn to stop myself. “No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I get kind of oblivious when I’m fixated on something.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“And I do appreciate what you have done for us both. I really am grateful—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Lucy exploded. I looked at her in confusion. “Sarah, I’m not doing this for her!”

“I don’t understand?”

“Sarah. I like Anjali. She’s got a good heart, she’s lovely.”

“Okay?”

“I really like you.”

“Okay?”

“I really, _really_ like _you_.”

It took me a while. “Oh!”

“Yeah. I know this isn’t a great time to have that conversation, and I have to think through some things myself. I have to say I absolutely did not think of you as the type to have a mistress on payroll, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. But now you know. And that’s why you can’t keep pushing for more than I can give you. It’s not fair on me.”

“I’m sorry.”

We sat together for a while, watching the gulls as they moved on to look for somebody more generous with their food. Eventually, Lucy said, “Sarah, if things _were_ simple, without all this bullshit happening”—she waved her hand expressively—“do you think you’d be interested in me?”

“I’m bad at hypotheticals.” I gave it some thought. “But if I was single, and none of this was going on, and you asked…yeah, I think I would give it a try. I really enjoy spending time with you, and I respect you, and those are the big things for me.”

Her expression lightened. “Well, thanks.”

I wanted to say something more about how I appreciated her dependability, and the fact that she’d been willing to go read up on how to understand me instead of trying to squeeze me into a one-size-fits-all model of humanity like so many do. But those words are hard to find, so I just squeezed her hand and hoped she’d understand.

She squeezed me back, and said, “But seriously, tell her to call Salwa?”

* * * * *

I put a lot of thought into how best to encourage and support Anjali in calling Lucy’s friend, but I needn’t have bothered. Before I could have that talk with her, she called me—from her replacement phone—to say that she’d already done it.

“Yes, I bit the bullet,” she told me. “It wasn’t as scary as I’d thought. She was really nice and understanding. I told her about us and the only thing that threw her was when I told her I’d declared the money on my tax returns.”

“Wait, you—well, of course you did. Never change, Anjali.”

“She talked to me about things like restraining orders, not that I’d be likely to get one now, but how to know if I do. She suggested I keep a log of my interactions with them, in case I need to provide evidence of a pattern of behaviour, and told me what kind of things to record.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea.”

“The good news is, our arrangement’s not _very_ illegal. The worst that can happen there would be some fines.”

“Okay. What’s the bad news?”

“I was afraid you’d ask that. The bad news is, she didn’t see a good way for dealing with that data. The tracker and accessing my email, that’s illegal, but it’s not the kind of thing that the police are going to kick down the door and take away their hard drive. Because they’re my parents and they could argue they were just concerned about their daughter, they’d probably get off lightly. Also, there’s a risk…”

“Oh?”

“If they did work out we’d been sleeping together, even without the money angle…she thinks my parents might accuse you of grooming me. As revenge against you and to excuse the spying.”

“What? But we were… you were twenty-three!”

“I was sixteen when you started tutoring me.” She sighed. “They’re not going to believe we were just friends for seven years before this happened. Not that you’d be charged with anything, but it could be very damaging if they made the accusation.”

“Well, yeah. It would.” The breath slid out of me as I considered all that might follow. “Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

“She says, if I do want to make a complaint, she’ll help me with that, but it might do more harm than good. We agreed that what we really want is those emails deleted off their computer, assuming that’s where they have them.”

“If it’s even them who made the copy,” I said. “I think we’re assuming they paid a PI or somebody else to put the spyware on the phone, maybe that person made the copy as well.”

“Yes, that’s a possibility. Though I don’t think my parents would want somebody else looking through my emails, if they thought there was something there. Dad doesn’t like airing dirty laundry. Plus, it’d need to be somebody who can read Hindi as well, and that means more risk of gossip. No, I think he’d have the copy. And Salwa said there’s no legal pathway she can see that has a good chance of getting that deleted without them knowing. She said that three times.”

“Crap.” We shared the disappointed silence for a while, and then I said, “Hey, on a different topic. I’ve been thinking about Switzerland.”

“Oh?”

“What I was thinking is, it’s going to be really hard if you’re alone in Switzerland and you don’t speak the language. But P-K has an office in Zurich. And there are always operations-research jobs going in Europe. I could…”

I trailed off, not quite wanting to say it.

“You’re talking about…coming with me? Overseas?”

“Only if you wanted. Maybe for a couple of years, until you’re settled in? Think about it. We could share costs, I can help you with language, you wouldn’t be all alone there.”

“Gosh. Sarah, that’s a big offer. I…I don’t know what to say.“

“Just an idea. You don’t have to.”

“Well, I’ll think about it.” She hesitated. “By the way, Lucy asked me some questions about us.”

“Yeah, she told me. Trying to make sure I wasn’t exploiting you.”

“Oh yes, that too.”

“That too? What else did she ask?”

“She wanted my permission to…to court you? She said she was interested in you but didn’t want to be a homewrecker.”

“Ah. Right. We did talk about it, but I didn’t realise she’d asked you.”

“She’s nice. How _do_ you feel about her?”

It was my turn to hesitate. “I don’t know. I like her a lot, but it’s hard to filter out everything else that’s been going on. And, look. I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of you going away.”

“Sarah. We said this was going to be until I finished my doctorate.”

“I know. It’s just…feelings are complicated. It’s hard to sleep with somebody over and over and not get attached.”

A long silence at the other end of the phone. “I understand that. And I do care about you. But Sarah, if you’re talking about moving overseas with me, would you be talking about extending our arrangement, or…?”

“Erm…I guess? If you wanted to? Or just as friends if you’d rather? I hadn’t really thought about that part.” Perhaps I hadn’t wanted to. “We could split a place just as friends, or rent separately if you want the space, or…what would work for you?”

Another long silence. “I need to think about that. And some time I need to research rental costs around Bern, I might ask your help with that. But we need to work out this stuff with my parents first. I need to.”

“Understood. Just letting you know. The offer’s there.”

More silence, and then more, and then: “She said it three times, with the exact same words. ‘There’s no legal pathway I can see that’s likely to take care of those emails without your parents finding out’. That felt a bit odd.”

“Hmm.”

“And there was something else she repeated, too. ‘The law doesn’t like to get involved in family disputes’. She said that a couple of times. I don’t know why. I mean, she was explaining why they wouldn’t want to take drastic action against my parents, but it was still odd the way she repeated it.”

It clicked for both of us at the same time. “No _legal_ pathway.” And then she said, “Sarah, I think I might have an idea…”


	13. Change Is Bad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah and Anjali deal with Anjali's parents, but Anjali's degree is coming to an end and with it their arrangement. What happens next? Will #TeamLucy let me live? Only one way to find out.

It took us several weeks to put the plan together. There were calls to make, flights to book, and certain other arrangements to make. I would have loved to involve Lucy in it all, but she’d made it very clear that that would be a bad idea, so I settled for smiling enigmatically during our lunches and telling her “you don’t want to know”. Meanwhile, until we were ready to act, Anjali carried the bugged phone around with her and acted as if nothing was wrong.

Then, early in October, she let her parents know that she’d be coming up to Sydney for Diwali, and could they please meet her at the airport on Saturday morning?

They drove up and waited in the pickup zone at the agreed time, but Anjali didn’t show. They called her phone—it rang, but didn’t answer—and texted. Ten minutes later, they received a reply:

_Come meet me inside the airport._

There was no more information, no further reply to their messages. By that point, I expect Mr. Kapadia would have checked the tracker and confirmed that the phone was inside the airport. After parking the car they would have made their way into the Virgin terminal, following the tracker through the building until they reached the back corner of an airport cafe where a woman sat alone at a table.

That was when I looked up from Anjali’s phone, smiled my very best smile at them, and said “Good morning. Anjali can’t be here, but she asked me to tell you a few things. Please do sit down.”

I had the advantage of surprise, and I did what I could with it. I explained that Anjali had taken her phone in for service, and that the technician had detected some unauthorised apps on it. (This was all true, though somewhat misleading; we’d seen no point in letting them know just how much we knew.) When Mr. Kapadia tried to bluster, I pointed out that he’d known just where to find me.

I told them that she was deeply hurt by this betrayal, and I waxed rhapsodic about her qualities as a friend: her kindness, her generosity, her trustworthiness. I reminded them that she was a grown adult, very nearly a doctor, and quite a sensible one who could perhaps be trusted to talk to boys now and then (another little piece of misdirection) without getting into trouble.

I told them that Anjali had asked me to convey her request that they not make any further attempts to contact her or surveil her, and that she would be in contact if and when she felt ready, and I suggested that if and when she did an apology on their part might be in order.

I did my best. I’d taken some days scripting what I had to say, and learning my script so I could move through it as fluently as if all this talk came naturally to me. I used everything I’d learned about them from our years of acquaintance; I leant on all the goodwill I’d ever earned with them.

When I was younger I used to believe that a good enough argument could win anybody over, if only I could find the right words. Nowadays I’m far less optimistic; life is not a video game and sometimes there isn’t a winning strategy.

So it was, for all my best efforts. They heard me out, mostly because I didn’t leave them room to get a word in. But when at last I stopped, the two of them replied, cold and angry. It was none of my business, and Anjali was their daughter, and she didn’t know what was good for her, and I ought to know far better than to presume upon them like this. They said far more than that, moderated only by their desire to avoid a public spectacle in front of airport security, and I expect it would have hurt my feelings if I’d thought about their words closely.

Instead, I just marked time. I watched their mouths move, and I nodded or shook my head as the occasion required it, and now and then I seized on one of their remarks and argued it for a while without any real expectation of changing their minds.

Eventually, I held up my hand and told them, “I’ve said what I came here to say. It’s up to you what you choose to do with that information. I’m afraid I can’t stay and talk, because my flight is boarding soon. I wish you the very best, but now I have to leave.”

Then I walked back through security screening, switched off the tracker phone, and flew back to Melbourne from the same gate I’d arrived at just a few hours earlier. I hadn’t even left the airport.

At the other end of my flight I walked across to the Qantas terminal and settled myself down with a good book. I had just finished it when the screens announced the arrival of another Sydney-to-Melbourne flight, and I was standing at the gate to meet Anjali as she walked off with a spring in her step that I hadn’t seen in some time.

“How’d it go?”

“As planned.” She hugged me and we walked out towards the taxi stand. “And you?”

“I said my piece. Don’t think they bought it though. Sorry, I tried.”

“Not your fault. It’s a pity, but I am not responsible for their choices, and neither are you.” She sighed. “I shall keep on telling myself that until I start believing it. The important thing is that you took plenty of time saying it to them.”

She had flown up the night before and stayed in a hotel. In the morning she’d caught an Uber and waited down the road from her parents’ house until she saw them both leave, then let herself in; in response to an entirely hypothetical question, Salwa had confirmed that it’s not housebreaking if they’ve given you a key. Her father’s password was still “tendulkar34357” and once logged on, she had no difficulty in finding the archive.

The next part was my idea. Anjali’s thought had been simply to delete the archive, but we’d both recognised that that might do more harm than good. It would be a very obvious sign of tampering, and if Mr. Kapadia kept backups—which both Anjali and Mahesh had advised him to do, after the virus incident—we couldn’t guarantee finding them. Far better to _sabotage_ it.

We’d made a copy of the archive from Anjali’s account, and then gone through it editing the incriminating parts. (“Like the school library,” Anjali had said. “We had editions of Catullus and James Joyce with all the naughty bits bowdlerised.”) Her “checklist, as discussed” was now a list of things to think about when planning a PhD thesis. We’d left the conversations about “Lily” mostly unedited, but changed the dates so that they no longer matched Anjali’s visits to my place, and in some cases coincided with times when Anjali had an alibi.

Anjali had copied the doctored archive over the original, changed the “last modified” date to cover her traces, and run a script to check for any other copies on her father’s computer. Satisfied that there were none, she’d cleaned up after herself and let herself out, texting me to let her know she was done. Even if there were still backups of the original version, her parents would have no reason to go look for them, and eventually they’d be overwritten with our edited version.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her.

“Sad. Relieved. I don’t know. I’ve blocked their numbers and I’ve let Mahesh know the situation.” I saw her shoulders slump. “I really was looking forward to his wedding. I don’t suppose I’m going now.”

“I’m sorry.” I’d never been to a Hindu wedding, but Anjali had attended many during our acquaintance, and through her I’d picked up an idea of their significance. I also knew she’d been taking a keen interest in Mahesh’s arrangements.

“Can’t be helped.” I felt her fingers slide into the crook of my elbow. “Is it okay if I stay over at yours for the weekend?” She didn’t need to tell me why.

“Sure. Though, will you be right for clothes?” She’d packed light for Sydney, just an overnight bag with one change.

“I will be if I don’t wear any.” She laughed at my startled expression. “I’m full of nerves and I very much need a distraction. If you don’t mind?”

“Not in the slightest.”

* * * * *

“So, what did you have in mind?” I asked her, some hours later. I was on my sofa; she’d just returned from a post-travel shower, having thrown her clothes in the wash and now wearing nothing but a towel, and the red scarf woven into her hair.

“I don’t know. It’s so loud in my head. Half of me wants some serious pain so I can switch off, and the other half really wants comfort. I can’t decide if I want you to spank me or cuddle me. And I’m sore.”

“Hmm.” I scratched my head. “You know, I might have an idea, but I’ll need to call in some help.”

“What _do_ you have in mind?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Always.”

“Wait and see.” I looked through a directory, made a decision, picked up the phone. “Hello there? Yes, I was looking to make a booking for this evening. You do outcalls, right? Yes, I’d like to book the two-hour deluxe package, if it’s not too late…it’s not? Great.” I gave the lady my card details and directions to my apartment. “See you soon!”

Anjali looked at me dubiously. “Did you just dial a dominatrix?”

“Wait and see,” I told her.

“Ought I to dress for the occasion?”

I looked her over. “Underwear maybe. But don’t hurry on my account.”

However, it was a little chilly for _just_ underwear, so she’d added an old bathrobe of mine by the time the buzzer sounded and I admitted a motherly-looking lady with a wheeled duffle bag.

“Hello, I’m Jean. Are you—”

“Yes, I’m Sarah, this is Anjali. You’ll be doing her tonight.”

“No problem.” She wheeled her bag in and surveyed my lounge room.

“We can do it here, or there’s a bed upstairs if you like?”

“Here is fine.” She unzipped the bag and pulled out a contraption of padded surfaces and locking metal struts. I stole a glance at Anjali’s face, and was gratified to see the sudden smile as she recognised it for what it was: a massage table.

A couple of minutes later and she was lying face down, wearing only her underpants. I’d dimmed the lights and put on something quiet while Jean got to work.

“Let me know if the pressure’s too much,” she told Anjali. I pulled up a chair near the table and took Anjali’s outstretched hand in mine.

“Just let yourself go,” I told her. “You don’t have to think about anything for the next two hours.”

Jean began. She squirted a palmful of oil into her hand, and started to work it into Anjali’s back and legs. It took a while for me to place the sweet smell, and I had to suppress a chuckle when I did: lilies. As Jean worked, I held Anjali’s hand; I switched sides as needed to keep out of Jean’s way; now and then I swept Anjali’s hair out of the way. If Jean thought it was odd for me to be holding her client’s hand, she said nothing about it.

Talking is hard but touch is magic. Through Anjali’s grip I could feel her restlessness at first, the nervousness of being touched by a stranger, squeezing my hand now and then for the return-squeeze that says: _I am here, I am protecting you, you are safe._ Slowly she settled into it, became comfortable with Jean’s touch, drifted into that zone of sensuality that lies just outside sexuality, and her grip on my hand steadied.

Then Jean began to work in earnest, probing the knotted spots in Anjali’s body with fingertips, knuckles, elbows. I felt Anjali’s body tense, breath held, until she had absorbed the pressure and accepted it, then she eased again. Over and over, tensing again with each new touch on muscles strained by worry and long hours at the computer, then opening herself to it, softening again, and each time sinking a little deeper into that peaceful empty space of acceptance. Her grip on my hand was light now, no longer seeking reassurance, just presence.

On impulse I leaned forward and rested my head against hers, closing my eyes. I hadn’t realised how much I was still carrying from that morning—the argument with Anjali’s parents, the uncertainty about whether she’d be able to carry out her mission, the awareness of all the myriad ways it could go wrong—but now, as I felt the tension ebb in Anjali’s body, I could feel it ebbing also in mine.

I was very nearly asleep when I felt Jean’s hands tapping quickly and lightly on Anjali’s back, signalling that the end of the massage was drawing near. She ran a warm cloth over Anjali’s back and limbs to clean up the oil—I very vaguely remembered her borrowing my sink—and then said very softly, “All done.”

“Mmm.” Anjali made no attempt to move until I whispered in her ear, “We need to give the nice lady her table back.” Then she sat up groggily and eased herself off the table.

“How do you feel?” asked Jean.

“So good. Thank you,” replied Anjali, as I handed her my bathrobe.

Jean packed up her gear as quickly as she’d unpacked it, and I led a happy and half-dazed Anjali up the stairs to bed.

* * * * *

In the morning we fooled around lazily in bed. I’d missed her these past weeks: the sex obviously, but also the warmth of her and the scent of her, the waking up half wrapped around one another. For a long time I nibbled at the nape of her neck—I could still smell the massage oil on her—and she squirmed in my embrace. Eventually we moved on to more carnal activities, culminating in several panting orgasms for her on my fingers and tongue before she returned the favour for me.

And yet, as good as it was, sometimes it felt as if her mind was elsewhere. I couldn’t say I was completely surprised; yesterday had been a big day, and it still remained to be seen just how things would shake out.

“So are we resuming this,” I asked, “or is today a one-off?”

“Just a one-off,” she said. “I still have so much to do. Seven and a half chapters to write, and I’m not happy with the structure. And so much paperwork for postdoc applications. Be proud of me, Sarah, I have some backup applications in case the Bern thing falls through.”

“Is that likely?”

“I hope not. But I’m trying not to put all my eggs in one basket. It’s hard, though.”

I gave her a gentle squeeze. “I hope they see how talented you are. I’ve been brushing up on my _Schweitzerdeutsch_.”

She stiffened. Ever so slightly, but I knew her body like nobody else.

“Sarah…”

“Yes?” I said, though I had a sudden feeling I didn’t want this conversation.

“Please don’t make those plans. I am so grateful for what you’ve given me, and I hope you’ll always be part of my life. But…”

“But,” I echoed.

“I’ve been orbiting around my parents most of my life. If I hadn’t met you…I’d probably still be living with them. God. I’d be driving myself mad trying to scrape through med and not even knowing what I was missing. But you have…” She paused. “I apologise for the metaphor, but you have quite a gravity well of your own. The longer we’re together the more I feel myself spiralling into your orbit. I don’t want to be anybody’s satellite, not even yours. I want to be your friend, and that requires…”

I’m no astronomer, but I knew enough of celestial mechanics to see where this metaphor was going. “Distance.”

“Distance. Yes. I’ve never really had the chance to find out what sort of person I am when I’m on my own. Do I want to get married and settle down with somebody, or be a celibate astronomy professor, or—I don’t know. I think I need to find that out. But as long as I’m with you it’s much too easy just to fall into being what you need me to be.”

She rolled over to face me, and I could see the anxiety in her face. “I don’t know how to say this. I don’t want to hurt you. But I can’t be in your debt more than I already am. You’d be moving away from your home, your family, your friends. From Lucy. I can’t replace all of them. I loved being your once-a-fortnight but I don’t think I can be your everyday. We made a finite commitment and I want to keep it finite.”

 _But this is less than what we agreed on,_ I wanted to say. _It was supposed to be until you finished your doctorate, but we’ve been on hiatus since August._ Wanted to say, but didn’t, because occasionally I remember there’s a difference between what’s true and what’s helpful, and because neither of us could have anticipated what a shit-show these last months would be.

After a long silence she added, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said reflexively. The part of me that was Miriam wanted her to be, wanted control, wanted dependency. But most of me was frozen in that long moment of shock that comes after an injury, before the pain has reached the brain. In lieu of an emotional response I couldn’t yet marshal, I channelled the received wisdom of a hundred and one advice columns I’d read over the years. “It’s…it’s your choice to make.”

Yes, that sounded like what a mature adult would say.

“I didn’t want to have this discussion today.” She sounded weary. “I was trying to work out when to tell you and how.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. Did it? I couldn’t tell.

Later, she said, “I think perhaps I should go now.”

I didn’t argue. I saw her out, telling her “I’ll be okay”, and then sat down trying to understand whether I actually _was_ okay.

* * * * *

I was sad, and I wasn’t sure why.

Obviously it was to do with Anjali, I’m not _that_ obtuse. But I was having trouble unpacking it. I was still trying to figure it out a few days later when Trev tapped me on the shoulder, late one afternoon after my minions had gone home, and asked, “Talked to Lucy lately?”

“Uh, no.” Come to think of it, I didn’t recall seeing her since the previous week.

“Might be an idea.” He was gone before I could ask more questions.

I took the hint and phoned her. The phone rang and rang, and I was about to hang up when she finally picked up.

“Yeah?”

“Hi, Lucy?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s Sarah.”

“Yes, I know.” A pause. “What’s up?”

“Uh…are you okay?”

A longer pause. “Been better.”

“Have you been sick? I’m sorry, I’ve been caught up in things the last few days, didn’t—” I was about to say _didn’t even notice you weren’t around_ but some instinct of caution suggested that maybe that wasn’t the right thing. “Lucy, what’s up?”

“I’ve been a bit…under the weather.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No, I…” She trailed off, and I thought one of us had lost signal, before she spoke again. “Actually, you could come over. If you liked?”

“Is that…I don’t quite understand. Are you asking me to come over?”

“Yes?”

She sounded small and sad, not the Lucy I was used to. When she opened the door to me an hour or so later she seemed somehow shrunken.

“Come in,” she said. “Sorry about the mess.” It wasn’t that bad overall—a couple of mostly-empty take-away containers here, a coat on the floor there, several unopened newspapers on the table—but what I did notice was a lot of empty bottles, more than seemed healthy.

I wanted to ask “So what’s up?” But I wasn’t altogether sure if Lucy was ready to answer that question openly and I felt that by asking too soon I might push her into evasions that she couldn’t back out of.

So I said nothing. I accepted her offer of a water, and sat down opposite her in the lounge room, and waited until she filled the silence.

“Problem with this place,” she said eventually, “is that Vic and Jeremy keep the liquor cabinet rather too well stocked.”

“Ah.”

“I was doing so well, and then…bunch of stupid little things. Couldn’t get to sleep, had a glass of red to take the edge off, and…here I am.” She waved her hand at the empties.

“Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear it. If you need somebody to talk to, you’re always welcome to ping me.”

She gave me a hard stare, and said, “I did.”

“What?”

“Friday night. I messaged you.”

“Did you—” I looked at my phone. “Oh shit, you did. So sorry. There was a lot going on.” I’d been going over last-minute stuff, preparing for my talk with the Kapadias. I faintly remembered seeing the message notification, thinking _I’ll check that later_. I never had done.

“Yeah.”

“I really am sorry. I was hyperfocusing on…stuff. Uh, stuff you asked me not to involve you in.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“And then, uh, Anjali and I had a talk. She told me…I can’t remember if I discussed this with you before. A while back I offered to go to Switzerland with her for a while, maybe share a place. She said no.”

Lucy nodded. “She called me last week. She was worried about how you’d take it. How _are_ you taking it?”

“Not sure. Feeling sad but I’m not sure exactly what part I’m sad about. I don’t know if it’s about losing what we had or about…I guess it was a bit of a fantasy, the Switzerland thing, not having to deal with her parents and not having to hide. Or maybe ego.”

“I wouldn’t be upset if you told me you were a little bit in love with her.”

“Maybe a little?” I remembered, belatedly, that going to Switzerland would have meant not being with Lucy. Somehow I had never joined those dots; I had worked out a solution for me-and-Anjali without ever considering what it would have meant for me-and-Lucy. Tunnel vision. “Shit, I’m sorry, I came here to listen to you, not to dump my stuff on you.”

“It’s okay.” She sighed. “Better than me gabbling about things I fucked up years ago. Look, I don’t know if it’s any comfort, but maybe you should be a little proud that she said no to you.”

“What? Proud?”

“Easiest way to hang onto somebody,” she said, refilling her glass from the tap, “is to make them think they can’t live without you. I think you have enough sway over Anjali that if you’d told her that, she’d have believed you. But you helped build her up into the kind of girl who’s able to say no when she needs to. Even to somebody she admires. Isn’t that something to be proud of?”

I frowned, trying to make sense of this unexpected paradox. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or messing with my head.”

“Not something I’d joke about. I know what she means to you. Well, a bit of it, anyway.” She was fidgeting in her chair. “Hey, can we go for a walk? I need to get out of here, I think.”

“Sure?”

So we went for a stroll around the neighbourhood, down to an old children’s park. It was just beginning to drizzle, cold spring rain, but we were dressed for it.

“I broke up with Pippa three years ago last Thursday,” she said. “Or was it four? I remember the date, right now I’m fuzzy on the year. Anyway.” A loud sigh. “Took her years to forgive me. Sometimes it still feels like I made the wrong call. But I just couldn’t go on the way I was. Needed to go do something with my life, even if it meant leaving her behind. Sarah, listen, Anjali asked me what to do, I told her that if she needed to go then she should do that. I swear I wasn’t trying to break you two up but…I had to tell her. I’m not going to lie to you about it.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

She peered at me. “I can’t tell if you’re mad at me. I’m not bad at reading people but sometimes you’re a tough one, Sarah.”

“I’m not mad,” I said. “And I promise if you want to know, you can ask and I will tell you. No, I’m sad. Still working through it. Don’t blame you though.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” I took her elbow, pulled her close as we stood to the side of the path letting a cyclist zoom past. “And Lucy, if it happens again, if you message me and you don’t hear back from me…please please call, or whatever it takes to get my attention. I swear it’s not because I mean to ignore you, just sometimes I get tunnel vision and it takes a lot to get through. But you have permission to nag me if I need to.”

“I’ll try to remember that.” She smiled sourly. “I’m not great at asking for help. Feels like I’m imposing, and I don’t want to wear out my welcome.” I started to argue, but she cut me off. “I know it’s irrational, but sometimes the feelings are louder than the facts.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Maybe, uh…it feels like it’s always me making contact, arranging to hang out, asking if you want lunch. Then the insecurity starts feeling like you’re just saying yes to spare my feelings.”

“Oh! So if I initiated that more? I can do that.” I took out my phone.

“Yes, that—” She stared at me. “Sarah, are you setting a calendar reminder for talking to me?”

“Yes? Is that bad?”

“No, I—well, I guess, whatever works.”

I nodded. We were at the park now and without consciously thinking about it we’d slowed down, just ambling around the creaky swings and slippery-slide, wet tanbark underfoot. “Lucy, how serious is the drinking?”

“I’ve been worse. Could be better. Running low on sick days for work. Usually it’s fine, just sometimes something catches me, and I tell myself I’ll just have one this time, and it’s never just one. If I was staying in a place of my own, I’d just keep it dry and reduce the temptation, but this one came pre-stocked.”

“I have—” I was about to say _room in my apartment and I can keep it dry easily enough_ but that would have been a terrible idea, rushing from one thing into another before the dust had even settled. Instead I stopped for a moment, unsure what to do with the sentence, until my brain supplied something else. “I feel like you’re the sort of person who’s better at keeping promises to other people than to herself.”

“Fair, I guess.”

“Here’s an idea, tell me if it’s stupid. I come around once a week, I take a count of all the alcohol in the house, I see whether it’s changed since last time. If it hasn’t, that will be great. And if it has, well, I’ll keep an eye on things and I’ll nag you if it looks like it’s getting out of hand.”

“You’d do that?”

“Uh huh.”

“You’re trusting that I wouldn’t go out and buy stuff to replace what I’ve had.”

“I’ll ask you then.”

“How will you know if I’m lying?”

I shrugged. “I trust you. And, tell you what, when do your aunt and uncle get back?”

“Just after Christmas.”

“If you make it that far without slipping…you get a reward. Your choice, within reason.”

She looked at me for a while, eyes narrowed, and then grinned. “I know exactly what I’m asking for.”

* * * * *

The last few months of 2017 were a peculiar time, one of those times in life where everything in flux and you can only wonder what it’s all going to look like when the music stops.

The marriage survey went on. I couldn’t walk down the street or switch on the TV without being smacked in the face with somebody’s opinion about whether people like me were a threat to the fabric of “the family”. I very nearly invited one of my co-workers to fuck off when he started making cracks about trans people, but settled for just playing dumb and saying “I don’t get the joke, can you explain?” until he got uncomfortable and fucked off of his own accord. Since I wasn’t seeing her any more, I redirected my Anjali money to the equality campaign. I felt sick to my stomach on the day the results were announced, and then elated when I heard we’d won, and then I got maudlin thinking about all the people who’d been waiting decades for that right and the ones I’d known who hadn’t quite made it.

I made the effort to check in with Lucy most days, and once a week on Tuesday nights I’d drop over to audit her aunt and uncle’s liquor supplies. She slipped more than once, but each time she fell off the wagon she’d tell me about it before I could even ask, and these setbacks were shorter and shallower than before. We’d take turns to make dinner, and sit and watch movies and talk about work or her or me, and it didn’t feel at all the same as spending time with Anjali.

When I was eight I went through a big Superman phase. It wasn’t that I wanted super-strength and x-ray vision, and I wasn’t yet ready to appreciate his quiet implacable goodness. Rather, he felt a kindred spirit to my own sense of alienation, growing up so far from a home that no longer existed.

At eleven I discovered Doctor Who, starting with the telemovie and then working my way through novelisations from the school library. I was fascinated by the Cybermen, humans become machines, and equally so by the Doctor, last of his kind.

At twenty-one I found it once more in Bowie as The Man Who Fell To Earth, yet another alien whose disguise as a human becomes a prison.

Then came Anjali, and from our first meeting I knew she was one of my kind. For all the differences in our backgrounds, speaking with her came naturally and easily in a way it seldom did with others. With her, I never felt like I was translating myself in order to be understood.

I was intensely fond of Lucy, but there was no doubt that she and I were made of different stuff. When I was with her, I knew I was in the presence of one of the locals. It took me quite some time to realise what this particular local was about.

Lucy would share her favourite music and movies with me, and watch my reactions, then ask me afterwards what I’d thought about them. Or we’d play a board game, and afterwards she’d ask me why I’d chosen one particular gambit instead of another. Or, on those occasional days when her work had intersected with mine, she’d ask me what I made of the discussions we’d had with others.

Eventually I realised what the point of all these questions was: to learn my language.

“I had so much difficulty reading your expressions,” she said. “Normally I’m good at it, but I kept misreading you badly. For a while I thought it was just a matter of learning your tells, but instead, the longer I knew you, the harder it got. Instead, I thought, maybe I should just ask you.”

At the time I just nodded. But a week later in the middle of some other, unrelated conversation, I replied: “I think I know why it got harder to read me.”

“Oh?”

“Trust. When somebody’s a stranger, I put a lot of work into remembering to smile and manage my tone of voice and all the rest of it. But the more I trust you, the less I think about what I need to project to you, and the more I can just focus on what you’re saying and what I think about it.”

“Huh. Okay, that makes sense…”

And over time, she got better at it, not by learning how to interpret my face, but by hearing how I thought. It still didn’t come as naturally to me as hanging out with Anjali. But some things have to be worked for.

Had it been almost anybody else, that level of attention might have been creepy, being studied like some rare beetle. But from Lucy it felt like a compliment: _You are worth learning._ And perhaps the reason it took me so long to recognise what she was doing, learning my ways, how to communicate with me, was that I’d only ever seen it from the other side.

I’d spent a lifetime learning hacks for social situations. Training myself to make eye contact, but not too much. Reading books on body language to understand what others might assume if I happened to fold my arms or stimmed with a pen while somebody was talking to me. Memorising scripts for sending an email (always begin and end with a salutation) and for a good-bye and for all the other occasions where you can’t say what you actually want to say.

Like almost every autistic woman, I’d taken it for granted that it was my eternal duty to bridge the chasm between me and my neurotypical fellows. I’d never expected to find somebody willing to put in the work from the other side to meet me halfway. Still nowhere near as easy as being with somebody who was born on the same side of things as me; it’s not the kind of thing you can take a crash course in, and the self-examination required to answer Lucy’s questions was challenging in itself.

But some things feel more valuable for having worked for them, and it is _such_ a feeling to learn that somebody considers you worth working for.

We were cautious. We were friends, and we were co-workers, and we didn’t want to prejudice either of those things. Moreover, Lucy had her own work to do. During one of our deep-and-meaningful chats, she told me that a lot of her issues with alcohol came down to self-medication: she had difficulty sometimes keeping her emotions in balance, and when they got too loud for her to deal with, alcohol was a way of blunting things. From my own experience with stimming I knew all too well that taking away somebody’s coping mechanisms, without addressing the reasons why they _need_ a coping mechanism, is a recipe for disaster. So Lucy needed to navigate that, getting to grips with the situations that made her need that self-medication, and figure out other ways for dealing with that.

It was a tough enough time for her without further messing with her emotional equilibrium. So we took things very slowly, and didn’t talk about how our regular Tuesday evenings were beginning to feel more and more like dates. But we were slowly drifting closer together, and I was starting to think I might like that.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

I missed Anjali. I liked Lucy more and more with every time we talked, but it didn’t make me miss Anjali any less.

We weren’t dating and she’d had to give up the evenings at Games Pixie, but we were still in touch online. We’d chat regularly about German separable verbs, about how she was structuring her thesis, about anything other than _us_. I found myself missing the smell of her hair and the warm presence of her body against mine. I wrote a lot of ill-advised flirtations and deleted them all unsent. Whatever it was that I felt for her, I couldn’t quite let it go.

* * * * *

Lucy and I bailed early on the office Christmas party that year. It was too loud to talk comfortably and well-meaning people kept offering us drinks; I could see Lucy getting antsy, so I made excuses for the both of us.

The night was still young. I didn’t want to ditch Lucy but I didn’t fancy our chances of finding anywhere quiet and non-boozy, not in party season, so without thinking I asked her, “Want to see my place?”

She took a moment to respond, which gave me just enough time to belatedly recall that this was a standard form for a pickup line but not enough to do anything about that before she said, “Sure!” By the time I could think of the right words to clarify that I’d just meant it literally, the moment had passed.

I gave her the tour and then we sat by the window, devouring a couple of ice creams and looking out over the city.

“Well,” she said, “you’ve been at P-K a year. What do you think?”

“Starting to settle in. It was all a bit terrifying at first”—she knew how I felt about change—“but I’m getting the hang of it. With your help.”

“It’s been nice having you around,” she said. “And full of surprises.”

“You’re telling me. Thanks for being there for me.”

“Likewise—oh, look!”

Out at Docklands, over the water, purple-blue-green fireworks were blossoming in the sky.

“One of the restaurants does them,” I said. “Gotta lure people to Docklands somehow. I get a nice view of the New Year’s fireworks from here too. If you’re not doing anything”— _or if you’re avoiding parties_ , I didn’t say—“you could come by for that.”

“Oh! You know, I’d love that.” She touched my hand, just for a moment, and it was nothing she hadn’t done a dozen times before during our lunches, but this time it felt different. “This is a lovely place you’ve got here.”

“I’m fond of it. Hey, your aunt and uncle get back some time soon, right?

“Yes, on the twenty-eighth.”

“So you’re moving on? How’s the house-hunting going?”

She made a face. “I hate real estate agents so much. Everybody talks shit about lawyers, but we’re not as bad as real estate. Nowhere near as bad.”

“That good, eh?”

“Don’t get me started. And it’s a bad time of year for it.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have offered, but I did. “If you need a place to crash for a while, while you’re looking…”

She took her time answering. “That’s so kind of you, but I’m sure they’ll let me stay on for a couple more weeks until I can find somewhere.” And then, she added, “Also, Sarah, if I were to move in with you, I don’t think I’d want it to be as a temporary thing.”

“I understand—”

“And even if you were offering that“—which saved me having to decide whether I _was_ offering—”I’m not quite at the place to be making that kind of long-term decision yet.”

“Fair.” I felt relieved. “Honestly I still need to get my head straight about some stuff myself.”

“Anjali?” she said.

“Yeah. I still…I always knew it had to end at some point, but it was sooner than I was counting on, and that still hurts. She’s going away in a few months and I still can’t let go of it.”

Lucy let me babble on for some time, and when I was done, she leant in and said gently, “What do you think she feels about it?”

“I…I don’t think she does?”

Lucy shook her head. “Sarah, Sarah. I’ve told you before, that girl adores you, and from what she told me, she was quite enjoying your arrangement too. Not just for the money. What makes you think she wouldn’t be sad about it too?”

“She’s never said anything about it—”

“To _you_ , maybe. I talk to her now and then, and she asked after you. Wanted to know how you’re going, if you were okay. Doesn’t mean she wants to marry you, but Sarah, I don’t think you’re the only one there who’s sad about how things ended.”

“Okay.” I absorbed that information. “I’m sorry, Lucy, I know it’s weird for you being dragged into this—”

“I don’t mind weird. It’s not _bad_ weird.” She patted my hand again. “Let’s get this straight, Sarah. I don’t do jealousy. Anjali’s not my rival, and you liking her, that’s just good taste. Wouldn’t bother me if the two of you were still sleeping together. Where it becomes an issue is when you get so wrapped up in moping over her that you can’t be present for me—”

“Okay.”

“—and that’s how I feel things are at the moment. Would that be a fair comment?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. I’m sorry. I just haven’t figured out how to quite get past it.”

“Mmm-hmm. Actually, I had an idea about that. I don’t know if it’s what you need, but…”

“Okay?”

“You’ve got some leave saved up, right? You transferred it over when we merged.”

“Yeah. Couple of months worth.”

“And Anjali submits her thesis in February, so that the referees have time to review it before she starts in Bern in April, right?” A couple of months was a short turn-around for a review, but I gathered one of Anjali’s reviewers was part of the same group in Bern she’d be working with, so we weren’t expecting too much trouble on that front.

“Yes, she—oh, I think I see where you’re going with this.”

“Take a holiday. Spend some money, go somewhere nice with her. God knows the poor kid deserves it. Say good-bye properly.”

“Really? You think she, she’d go for that?”

Lucy shrugged. “Maybe. Guess you’ll never know if you don’t ask.”

“I think…” I tried to come up with reasons why it wouldn’t work, but in the end I realised it wasn’t actually my job to reject the idea. “That really would be lovely, if she’s up for it. But Lucy, are you sure _you’re_ okay with it?”

“Told you, I don’t do jealousy. But, look, if you want to make it up to me, I’ll settle for the same thing I was going to ask for if I hadn’t fucked up…you know…staying on the wagon.”

“I wish you wouldn’t beat yourself up about that. Everybody gets to fuck up now and then. Give yourself some credit for all the days when you didn’t. But okay, I’m curious to know what you were going to ask for.”

“I guess you’ll find out when you get back.”

“Deal.”

* * * * *

I phoned Anjali the next day. After recent experiences, I still had qualms about committing certain things to email, and besides I knew if I tried to write an email I’d get stalled trying to find the perfect words. Better to get the words out. Heart in my stomach, I told her what Lucy had suggested, finishing with, “but only if that’s something you’d want to do.”

“Hmm,” said Anjali. “I need to think about that. Can I let you know?”

“Sure,” I said weakly, and then, “well, I’d better go and leave you with it.”

I was braced for the worst. One of those long silences that stretches out for weeks while I try to guess whether they’ve forgotten, or if they’ve already decided no and are just waiting for me to lose interest so they don’t have to say it.

But it was only half an hour later that my phone chimed with her reply. _Yes. If the timing works, I would very much like to do that._

* * * * *

At the end of a PhD, it’s customary to do a presentation on one’s work. In some countries that happens as part of a _viva voce_ , an oral examination where a panel of expert reviewers interrogates one—sometimes for hours—aiming to identify every possible flaw in the work. That kind of peer review is important, but for those who don’t think well on their feet (like me) it can be a terrifying prospect.

In Australia, the process is a little gentler. The real peer review is commonly done by correspondence, so the candidate gets to answer criticisms without the pressure of time and a live audience. But it’s still expected that we’ll give a lecture. For Anjali that meant presenting to an audience of approximately a hundred of her colleagues, fellow students, juniors, and anybody else who happened to show up. Like me, for instance.

Through truly heroic efforts and some ruthless editing she’d managed to submit a draft on her thesis on the afternoon of the last day of February. The seminar was a week after that, just enough time for her to put a presentation together.

I’d taken the morning off work and showed up a little early to give her moral support. It shouldn’t have surprised me to find that she’d made herself a new dress. This one was less ornate than some of her creations, a simple cut in canary yellow, but it framed her perfectly and set a cheerful tone for the occasion without being distracting. After wishing her well, I found myself a seat up near the back of the auditorium and waited for the coordinator to introduce her.

Anjali had long ago passed the point where I could keep up with her research, and it wasn’t the most polished of presentations; she was nervous and spoke too softly and too quickly. But as she went on, flipping through slide after slide of algebra and simulation plots, I could see her beginning to forget the audience and hear the joy creeping back into her voice.

Anjali spoke about stars almost massive enough to collapse into black holes, and about their atoms being crushed together into iron nuclei and then crushed further into a gigantic ball of neutronium. She talked about how she’d measured the spin of her dead stars to detect quakes as their material settled, and from there how she’d estimated where the border lay between the iron zone and the core.

I only understood about a tenth of it, but there was no missing the rhapsody in her words as she spoke. I stole a glance around the auditorium to see if anybody else was moved by it as I was. Many of the listeners wore a politely glazed expression, but a few of them were nodding enthusiastically. I recognised her advisor Professor Cheng, and a couple of her friends who I’d seen on her Facebook at one time or another.

Halfway through, the door bumped open behind me and a late arrival snuck in. He’d picked my row so I wriggled over a couple of seats to make space for him. He was a handsome young Indian man, and he nodded thank-you to me then did a double-take, just at the same time I was thinking he looked familiar. But I couldn’t quite place him; just as with Lucy a year earlier, I didn’t have the right context.

“Sarah?” he whispered.

“I’m terribly sorry, I’m bad with faces…”

“I was a lot younger last time we met.”

“Oh! Mahesh!” Anjali’s brother! He would have been a gangly fifteen-year-old when I’d seen him last. “She’ll be so glad you could make it—hey, aren’t you getting married soon?”

“Next week.” Then somebody shushed us and we watched the rest of it in silence, Mahesh filming the talk on his phone. But after the talk, while one of the emeritus professors up the front was offering an unnecessarily long “this is more of a comment than a question”, Mahesh leaned over to me. “I’m just up for the day, the parents don’t know I’m here.”

“Well, they’re not going to find out about it from me. I’m kind of _persona non grata_ with them for the moment.” _For a very long moment._

“So I heard.”

To everybody’s relief, the emeritus professor eventually finished his not-a-question and the host congratulated Anjali. As most of the audience started to leave we worked our way against the flow to where she stood at the podium packing up her laptop.

Anjali caught sight of me first. “Hello S—MAHESH!” She pounced on him and hugged him hard enough to lift him off his feet. “You came! You didn’t tell me you were coming!”

“I didn’t want to let you down if I couldn’t make it. But I owe you for all the times you helped me with my physics homework. So proud of you, big sister. Or is it _Doctor_ Anjali now?”

She hugged him again, and when she pulled back her eyes were suspiciously wet. “You’re my favourite brother.” An in-joke; he was her only brother.

The three of us went to lunch together. Anjali peppered Mahesh with questions about his wedding arrangements, and he promised to send her photos of everything. Then he asked, “So you’re really going?”

“I am, baby brother. Five days to pack everything up and then we’re flying out.”

“Both of you?” He looked between me and Anjali, and she nodded.

“Sarah has work stuff to do in Amsterdam and she wanted a holiday anyway. So we’re visiting Iceland for a couple of weeks, and then she goes on to the Netherlands and home, and I go on to Switzerland. With luck, my things will have arrived by then.”

This was all true, although the idea of visiting our Schiphol partners had been very much an afterthought. I had originally suggested Germany, but Anjali had balked: “You speak the language much better than I do, and you’ve lived there. If we’re doing this I want to do it together, not you as the host and me as the guest.” So we’d settled on somewhere equally foreign to both of us.

“Not that it’s any of my business,” Mahesh said, “but are you…” He trailed off, then shook his head. “You know what, never mind.”

“Hmm?” said Anjali.

“I just remembered that what I don’t know can’t be tortured out of me. So I’m not going to ask. But I hope you have a terrific time. Any idea when you’ll be back?”

“Probably not for years,” Anjali said. “I’m sorry. I’ll miss you, baby brother, but—you know how they are.”

“Then maybe I’ll come visit you some time…”

“Oh, I would love th—“

“…like next time I have a physics problem.”

“Brat.” She swatted the air in front of his face.

* * * * *

We flew economy, because work wasn’t paying for this one. Anjali, who had been flat out for days getting her stuff moved and her flat cleaned for final inspection, fell asleep on my shoulder before we’d even taken off and slept through most of the first leg. We changed flights in a country where kissing one another could have had us jailed—hooray for travelling while queer—and then it was my turn to sleep cuddled up to Anjali.

We had another change in Copenhagen, where we learned that our flight onwards to Keflavik was to be delayed by a massive storm, leaving us with eight hours to explore the airport. While I hopped online to let our B&B know we were delayed, Anjali explored the airport’s Lego shop to find a souvenir for Mahesh, which left us about seven hours to kill.

Anjali had been wearing her scarf all along; I’d registered the fact but not really noticed it until we were browsing through a chocolate shop together, and then I suddenly thought: _I can do this. I am allowed. Nobody here knows us._ I took a deep breath, reached down, and clasped her hand in mine. Just for a moment she stopped what she was doing—surprised, I guess—and then she slid her fingers between mine and squeezed, and I felt my heart jump a little.

I spent the next few hours with what I assume was a stupid grin on my face. We were holding hands in public, where anybody could see, and it was okay! Later, while we were sitting at a cafe, she rested her hand on my knee, and I felt giddy. It had been a very long time since I’d been able to tune out that voice that says _what if somebody saw you?_

We flew in through the remnants of the storm, and the last few hours were alarmingly bumpy. Anjali and I held hands again through the worst of the weather, and I couldn’t tell you whether it was for her sake or mine. But we made it to Keflavik in one piece, as did our luggage, and after one last shuttle ride to Reykjavik we made it to our B&B somewhere around eleven at night. A kindly old lady showed us up two flights of stairs to a small but cozy room and there we crawled into a double bed to sleep the disordered sleep of the badly jet lagged.

We spent the first couple of days exploring Reykjavik, taking it easy while our body clocks adjusted, clomping around town seeing the sights and getting a feel for the weather. We visited the Icelandic Punk Museum (yes, that’s a thing), and the Parliament building (it’s a Thing), and the Phallological Museum (lots of _things_ ), and at that point I had to tell Anjali that there would be severe penalties for any further “thing” jokes. For some reason this did nothing at all to dissuade her, and I was regretfully obliged to deliver several spankings once we were back in our lodgings.

Once we’d settled in a little and our body clocks had adjusted, we began to explore further afield, taking a coach tour of the Golden Circle and then hiring a car to drive east through gravel and lava fields to Jökulsárlón where ice floats and cracks unquietly in a glacial lagoon.

You’ll find better descriptions of Iceland elsewhere; I’m a mathematician, not a travel writer. But what I remember most about it (the _thing_ I remember most about it, Anjali would have said) was _contrasts_. The black rock and the white snow; the pure glacial water that ran from the cold taps, and the sulfur-stink from the hot; warm and welcoming people, descended from murderous raiders and their slaves. I come from an old continent where the earth fell asleep long ago; in Iceland, the land is still growing, sometimes violently so.

The sweetness of having Anjali-Lily with me, all day and every day. We discovered new things together, we marvelled at waterfalls and geothermal plants and handcrafts, we huddled together against the wind. In the nights, and occasionally in the mornings, we—made love? Fucked? I am not sure what to call it. I could not remember being happier.

And as the days ticked by, and I counted down our remaining time, I could feel my heart hurting with the anticipation of losing her: _verlustangst_ , the Germans call it. Every now and then as we lay together, or as we talked, it would sneak up on me, and I would try to hide that sudden twinge from Anjali.

But she noticed.

Two days before the end, we visited the Blue Lagoon. It is a cunning piece of work: a large pool in the rock where silica dissolved in heated water colours it blue, and for a sum of money you can bathe there. From reading the brochures, it would be easy to come away with the impression that it is some miracle of nature, but the truth is rather more prosaic.

Nearby is a power station, which draws up superheated steam from deep in the rock and uses it to spin turbines. In the process, the water cools to a modest eighty-odd degrees Celsius, and some of that is piped down to Reykjavik to provide hot water and to de-ice the roads. But the rest needs to go back into the water table, so what do you do? You dig a big pool, and fill it with the waste water, now cooled to human-friendly temperatures, and let it soak back into the ground.

And if you are a very shrewd businessman, you charge tourists to soak in the pool and sell beauty products based on the silica. The advertising doesn’t lie, but it doesn’t exactly emphasise that one is paying to bathe in power station runoff.

I knew, but didn’t mind at all. The water was no less warm and relaxing for that, and I admired the efficiency of it all. We soaked in it for hours, soothing muscles tired from a hard drive the day before—not a long distance, but it had been snowing hard and I’d had to slow to a crawl. The snow was still falling, and we had flakes in our hair, so we sat there with just our heads sticking out, averaging a very pleasant temperature indeed.

There was a poolside bar, where one could buy drinks without leaving the water, and at one stage Anjali went off to get cocktails for us both, returning to catch me in a pensive moment.

“You’re sad,” she said, handing me my glass and then slipping her arm around my waist.

“I am. Just thinking that it’s almost over. I keep wanting to do stupid things. Ask you to marry me and stay with me. I know that’s not the answer, I know that’s not what you want, I don’t think it’s even what I want. And there’s Lucy. But…god, I’m going to miss you, Anjali.”

“I will miss you too.” She pulled me in close, head on my shoulder, and after a few seconds I felt a wetness on my skin that was neither snow nor volcano-water but something of more human origin. “I hate that things have to end. But…”

“I know they do.” I settled my drink on a rock by the poolside, but it was uneven and more slippery than I’d allowed for; the glass toppled and spilled. “Shit. I don’t…I’m not asking you to stay. I know it can’t happen. But I do love you, Anjali. You’ll always be important to me.”

She set her own drink aside, with more success than I had achieved, and hugged me tight as she kissed me on the lips. “You too,” she murmured. “I don’t—I don’t love you like Valentines and wedding rings, not that kind of love. But I love you, Sarah. I hope you know that.”

“I do.” We held one another as the volcanic heat seeped through our bones, and the tangled ball of all the incompatible things I wanted and the ones I couldn’t have…well, it was still a tangled ball of complications that I might never fully unravel. But I started to feel that perhaps it was something I could lift, and take with me to wherever I was going next.

For now, though…I was tired, and _verklempt,_ and vaguely aware that people were probably staring at us. “Is it okay if we go soon?”

“Of course.”

That evening, back in our room after dinner, I was still moody and down. I’d stripped off and crawled under the quilt; returning from her evening shower, Anjali slipped in behind me and cuddled up against my back.

“Once upon a time,” she whispered, “there was a fairy named Lilabel, daughter of the Dandelion King, who was perhaps not as sweet and innocent as people thought her to be. And there was another fairy, Lady Tanglespine, who was perhaps not quite the villain that people thought her to be.”

“Oh?”

“One day it happened by accident that Lilabel fell into Lady Tanglespine’s clutches. Or, who knows, perhaps she allowed herself to be ensnared? Perhaps she had grown tired of her father’s court and wanted to see the world beyond his realm? Perhaps she was curious enough and bold enough to wonder just what Lady Tanglespine would do to her?”

Her hand was a light presence on my hip.

“However it may have happened, she found herself bound to Lady Tanglespine’s service for seven years, during which time she learned a number of very interesting things, and I hope I may say that Lady Tanglespine was satisfied with my—with her service.”

She paused, and I felt her lips brush the back of my neck. Her fingers were circling slowly at my hip.

“Sometimes that seven years felt like an eternity, and sometimes it felt like the blink of an eye. But eventually it came to an end.”

Her fingers slid over my back, coming to pause at the base of my spine; if I’d been a cat, she would have been stroking me just above the tail.

“At the end of the seven years, Lady Tanglespine told her, ‘You have served me obediently, and you have acquitted your debt to me. You are free to go.’ She led Lilabel to the border of her land, and the great thorn-bushes parted in front of her, and Lilabel stepped out towards the daylight. But when she had one foot across the threshold she looked back, and she saw Lady Tanglespine was weeping. So she turned, and said, ‘If you wish it, I will stay one day more. Not as your servant, not as the Dandelion King’s daughter, but as the one who has shared your bed these seven years.’ Then she walked back into Lady Tanglespine’s keep and the thorns closed behind her.”

Her fingers were stroking my arse and she broke off talking to nuzzle at my shoulders, her lips warm and alive and mine, not forever but for now. I reached back with my foot to nudge hers, bending one knee to allow her better access. She accepted the invitation and began to caress the sensitive skin at the inside of my thighs, and then she slipped her other hand under me and around to stroke my face. Her fingertips traced my forehead, my cheekbones, dallied on the tip of my nose, circled my lips.

I didn’t know whether I wanted to reciprocate or just to lie there and be pampered. I settled for stroking her hands as they moved over me and wriggling backwards to snuggle myself against her body. Her fingers pressed against my mouth, inviting my kisses, and her other hand now brushed through the fuzz of my mons in an exploratory pattern that gradually shifted downward. By the time she reached my vulva I was eager; I squeezed her hand tight against me and arched my head back to nip at her fingertips.

She stroked me slowly and gently, gradually increasing the pressure. It was very pleasant and moderately arousing, but it was only taking me so far; she was working left-handed and the rhythm wasn’t quite right. Or perhaps my head was too full. After some time she noticed that we weren’t getting anywhere—not that we were in a hurry, mind—and she paused, and said, “What would you like, my darling Tanglespine?”

I rolled over to face her. “What would _you_ like, Miss Lilabel?”

“I’d like to make you happy.” She swept the hair out of my face. “A girl could get used to taking orders from you.”

“A girl could get used to bossing you around.” I slid one hand around the back of her neck, like scrumming a kitten, and her eyes rolled back as I took charge. “Show me that you know your place.”

“Yes, Mistress.” She gave me a quick peck on the lips and slid off the bed to kneel beside it, gazing up at me, ready. I swung my legs around to bracket her, ruffled her hair, and then pulled her into me. Her tongue was first, swirling, worshipping, and the warmth of her cheeks between my thighs, and the tickle of her hair over my knees; she’d tied it back but now I pulled it loose, teasing it out to spread like a blanket.

I think perhaps that was always the magic of it for me: not just the feeling of taking her, but the knowledge that she’d given this to me, that no matter how far down I took her, I’d always bring her back again.

“Good girl…ah…good girl.” Her fingers were in me now, curling gently, rhythmically, and she had her other hand on my thigh. I took it in my right, lacing my fingers between hers, and with my left I began to stroke my own breast, pinching my nipple, letting those little twinges of pain run down my body and collide with the slow lapping ripples of pleasure Anjali was giving me, merging together to form something that filled my body to bursting point. I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed mine, and the closer I got the slower and the gentler she went, bringing me to the edge and backing away, again and again, until I muttered “please?” and she wriggled her fingers and her tongue gave a little squirmy twist that brought me over the edge. I threw back my head and stuffed the back of my hand in my mouth to muffle the sound.

At length, when I’d regained some semblance of composure…I made her do it again. And when she was done, I pulled her up to me, all rumpled and sticky-faced and smelling of me, and I kissed her and threw her on her back and paid her back, biting at her breasts, leaving toothmarks on her skin as my fingers jerked her to a series of little paroxysms, and this time it was her turn to shove her hand in her mouth.

We kept on, teasing and stroking and occasionally wrestling one another, until eventually fatigue caught up with us and we subsided into a slow-moving cuddle session drifting gradually towards sleep, murmuring affectionate and not entirely coherent things to one another. I was almost out when Anjali said, “And afterwards, Lady Tanglespine showed Princess Lilabel to a different gateway, at the opposite end of her domain, and when Lilabel left for the second time she did not return to her father’s kingdom.”

That wasn’t quite our last time—we still had a day left, and we made the most of it—but it’s the one I remember.

* * * * *

My flight left from a different gate to hers, and half an hour before. We scouted the two gates together, and then stayed together at mine until the last possible moment, and hugged one another goodbye. It hurt. like. fuck.

* * * * *

When I opened my suitcase in Amsterdam, I found a small parcel that hadn’t been there when I packed it, addressed to me in Anjali’s tidy handwriting.

Inside were two Lego figures, one a white woman (well, Default Yellow) in trousers, whose hair looked something like mine, the other a darker-skinned woman in a dress and, for some reason, a blue superhero mask. There was also a note.

_Dear Sarah,_

_I never quite knew what to call our relationship. There are so many different words and none of them quite fit. But then, words are just boxes we make up to put things in. If we don’t fit in a box, that is a fault of the boxes and not of us. Pluto is Pluto, and strange and wonderful, no matter what we call it. I would not be the person I am without you, and I hope I have left my mark on you too. Just to say that you mattered to me, and you still do matter to me. Just because we can’t be everything to one another doesn’t mean we’re nothing; just because it wasn’t forever doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter._

_Take care, and don’t be a stranger._

_I was going to give you the scarf back to remember me by, but I have decided that I want to keep it. I got you these instead._

_Love, Anjali._

_P.S. Ignore the mask, my options were limited so I had to cannibalise a Kamala Khan figure._

I laughed, and then I cried.

* * * * *

I had four days of work time in Amsterdam. It had been two and a half years since my previous visit, and most of the people I’d met with last time had moved on to other projects, but Miep was still there, in a new and larger office.

“They were very happy with how I managed the project,” she told me, “and now I’m chief operations manager here. I understand you also have been promoted.”

“I suppose I have.”

“This worked out well for both of us, then. Shall we drink to that, after your presentation?”

“Why not?”

I gave a talk to Miep’s team, explaining how the facility management system worked—at least, the bits it was useful for them to know—and what its limitations were. From them I picked up several suggestions for future improvements and learned a few useful things about how the reality of the place compared to our mathematical model.

I’d expected the drinks afterward to be a team event, but it turned out to be just me and Miep. Sitting in a booth in a brewhouse that was pleasantly quiet (by brewhouse standards) and dimly-lit, we chatted about our careers and then gradually the conversation drifted to life outside work, and family. She’d broken up with her partner a year ago—I noticed her carefully skirting around any mention of gender—and I said something vague about “being at a transition point”.

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

“Airport Sheraton.”

“What’s that like?”

“Not bad. Standard hotel.”

“I always find hotels are a little bit soulless.” She finished her drink. “You would be quite welcome to stay over at my place instead, if you prefer.”

“Are you…” I reran the conversation in my head. “Miep, is that a come-on?”

“It most certainly is.”

I had to think through my answer. I liked Miep, and Lucy had told me she wasn’t the jealous type, and I was a long way from home. And yet…

“That is a very lovely offer, Miep, but unfortunately I cannot take you up on it. Things are complicated right now, but there’s somebody waiting for me at home.” Which was easier than trying to articulate: _I find you attractive, and nobody would object if I did, but I am busy processing the end of one thing and the beginning of another, and there is nothing left over for this._

But I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I said, “I think I can do this much, though.” I leaned in and kissed her, briefly but firmly. “I hope that’s better than nothing.” And then I went back to my hotel room, which was clean and felt too large for one.

* * * * *

Lucy was waiting for me when I cleared Customs. We hugged, and she ruffled my hair, and then drove me back to my place even though I could easily have taken the airport shuttle. On the way she asked me how the trip had gone, and I told her, and she nodded as I talked.

At the end, she said, “Was it what you needed?”

“I think so, yes. Thank you for…well, you know.”

“I am glad. Now get some sleep.”

Two days later, once I was a little less jet lagged, she dropped round for dinner at my place. After the meal, I said, “So I believe I owe you a thing.”

“I haven’t forgotten. You said anything, within reason?”

“Anything.”

She studied me for a little while, then nodded. “Sarah, would you tell me about your tattoo?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an imperfect story. It took over three years to write; mental focus has been in short supply lately FOR SOME REASON and the structure of this is more complex than things I've written before.  
> Sarah isn’t me, but there’s a lot of me in her, and I’m not the same person I was three years ago. Some of the things I meant to do with this story didn’t end up happening, either because they no longer fit the characters in my head, or because I thought of something better. There are parts of this that are rougher than I’d like, but an imperfect story completed is better than a perfect story that will never be finished. So here it is.  
> Self-censorship is a big part of the autistic experience. We get absolutely enthralled by something, be it Renaissance costuming or lizards or model railways, and we love to talk about the things we love…but we quickly learn that we have to choke that back or risk being seen as weird.  
> It didn’t feel right to do that in this story. I needed to let Sarah be her authentic self. So I gave myself permission to let her talk about her passions for as long as she wanted. I’m sure that decision (not to mention my erratic posting schedule) has lost me some readers along the way. But for those of you who stayed to the end—I appreciate you very much. Thank you for listening to Sarah’s monologuing. I hope you’ve learned something useful about graph theory, container management, and/or German goth music.  
> One part of this story that’s not based on personal experience is the sex-work aspect. Here I have benefited greatly from reading first-hand accounts from RL sex workers, and I’d recommend doing the same if you’d like to learn more about the complexities of the industry. This story sticks very much to the safe and non-confronting end of that industry, but all sex workers deserve to be safe and respected.  
> Thanks to everybody from Literotica who beta-read, contributed advice, and pointed out problems in the story, including but not limited to AwkwardMD, LaRascasse, LesbianChickLit, stickygirl, Vix Giovanni, BrokenSpokes, Omenainen, Blind Justice, and my partner. Please check out their stories! And thanks to A. for vital Lego fact-checking. Details matter.  
> Last of all, thanks to those of you who’ve read and/or commented on this series, and love to any of my fellow aliens who may have recognised a little bit of themselves in this.


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